


Stormbreaker / Coffinmaker

by PastelClark



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Blood and Violence, Dubious Ethics, Gen, Gladiator Pidge, Gladiator Shiro (Voltron), Kerberos Pidge, Lack of Understanding of Trans Identities (ALSO Via our Good Friends the Galra Empire), Murder, Permanent Injury, Pidge & Matt Role Reversal, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Relationships, Roleswap, Swearing, Taking "Let Pidge Say Fuck" To The Logical Extreme, Trans Female Pidge | Katie Holt, Trans Pidge | Katie Holt, Transphobia (Via our Good Friends the Galra Empire), Underage Drinking, aged-up Pidge, references to genocide/fascism/general Galra Empire talk territory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-23 15:45:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 31,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14335776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastelClark/pseuds/PastelClark
Summary: When Pidge is offered the spot as communications officer for the Kerberos Mission, to accompany her father, and her friend and former classmate Shiro, she’s expecting eight months of quiet, beautiful cosmos, ice samples, and—if she’s lucky—some broadcast signals to support her alien life theories.She isnotexpecting to end up the prisoner of a fascistic race of alien cat-lizards hellbent on apparently reenacting the ugliest parts of the Roman Empire, down to the massive enslavement and expansion effort and the gladiators as entertainment shtick.But, if she’s going down, she figures she might as well go down swinging.(Or, in which Pidge is the third Kerberos member, is decidedly not a damsel in distress who needs protection—thank you very much Shiro—is very much done with this crap, and fully intends to make it home to her little brother, no matter what it takes.)Written for thePidge Big Bang.





	1. Willow

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, hello! Welcome to Stormbreaker / Coffinmaker, my fic for the [Pidge Big Bang](https://pidgebigbang.tumblr.com/). Developing the concept and storyline for this fic was the work of months (even if I wrote 90% of it in the last two weeks before it was due shhhh), and I'm so pleased to finally be able to share it. I love Pidge and the friendship she holds with Shiro, and I really wanted a chance to explore that in a setting where they were closer to being peers, as well as what her relationship to Matt would be like if she were the older sibling, and hence that (+ my desire to just see Pidge kicking ass as a gladiator) is how Stormbreaker was born. 
> 
> As always, music played a big part in my writing, and I'd like to take a moment to credit that:  
> I wrote and outlined this fic largely to the work of Barns Courtney and Florence + The Machine, particularly his  [The Attractions of Youth](https://open.spotify.com/album/2pWDyiJFya59ue0391kzSl) album and her [How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful](https://open.spotify.com/album/0Om2TWqroaCLQamQME3bD2) album, respectively, and the influence of both is definitely there in how the story turned out.  
> The title of this fic was chosen as a nod to two songs that pushed the concept and development of Stormbreaker by leaps and bounds. Of Monster And Men's [Winter Sound](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cgiKevlNQo), and Florence + The Machine's [My Boy Builds Coffins](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQUn59U8rm4).  
> And of course, I can't not mention the song that played the original inspiration for this fic: No Doubt's [Just A Girl](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRpY19mbeqw).
> 
> For your listening enjoyment while you read, there's also an _actual_ playlist for this fic (with more than just those previously mentioned couple of artists in it, promise). You can find the [tumblr post for it here](http://pastel-clark.tumblr.com/post/173094860122/alstroemeria-playlist-for-stormbreaker), with art by the wonderful corpus--corvus, or jump straight to the [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/pastel-clark/playlist/6HCTzHRSBQqX7IfWLGAhtv) or [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYyikp8pvXEAKEMiZue_0AXxRkMXn69L0&disable_polymer=true) link. 
> 
> Before you read, a final warning for the content -- this is a gladiator fic, boys & girls & nonbinary pals. That means violence, blood, injury (Shiro's probably an obvious indication but people do lose limbs), fight to the death scenarios, and murder. People die in this story, and not all of them necessarily deserve it, though rest assured Pidge and Shiro themselves stay (relatively) intact. There's also the presence of underage drinking in a flashback scene, some mentions of the sexual abuse and forced prostitution of slaves within the Empire, and swearing. So much fucking swearing. Additionally, while all relationships are written to be strictly platonic, Shiro and Pidge's longer friendship and view of each other as closer to peers does mean their friendship has an emotional intimacy that wouldn't necessarily be seen in their canon counterparts. They lean on each other for support, quite literally, so if any of that would be a personal squick to you for whatever reason, please look away now. 
> 
> That's about it! Enormous thanks to the Pidge Big Bang mods for putting this all together, and to my artist, [anime7otaku7artist7](http://www.anime7otaku7artist7.tumblr.com), for their phenomenal work. Their art is embedded in the story, and you can also find a link to it [here](https://anime7otaku7artist7.tumblr.com/post/173122179902/alrighty-i-was-teamed-up-with-pastel-clark-for). 
> 
> Stormbreaker is split into eight sections, with the entirety already written out pre posting. Chapters range from about 4-10 thousand words, with the first one being the shortest. It will update every day until its completion (so long as everything with editing and posting goes smoothly on my end, at least. Here's hoping). Enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Willow: Forsaken](http://www.languageofflowers.com/flowermeaning.htm#anchorm)
> 
>    
> The gorgeous title art opening this chapter, while not provided by my official artist for the Pidge Big Bang, _is_ provided by the wonderful [corpus--corvus](http://www.corpus--corvus.tumblr.com), who put up with months of my ranting about Stormbreaker!Pidge, and generously provided me with both this title art, and coverart for this fic's playlist. Thank you Logan you're a peach. 
> 
>  

_Oh I'm just a girl, living in captivity_

_Your rule of thumb_

_Make me worry some_

_Oh I'm just a girl, what's my destiny?_

 

\- "Just a Girl", No Doubt

 

 

 

“Careful,” is the first thing Pidge’s father says to her, and she sighs, blowing errant bangs out of her eyes—she knew she should have pinned them back when they were suiting up—as she steadies her arms and inches the ice sample out of the extraction drill.

 

“Yeah, Pidge, careful,” Shiro says with a grin she can only classify as shit-eating, leaning over the back of the drill with his forearms resting on top.

 

“I _am_ careful,” she snaps, fully removing the sample and hefting it between her arms. The weight is less than that of Earthen ice of the same mass—which is expected, given the gravity on Kerberos is much lesser than that on Earth. It’s a lucky thing their suits are specially designed and weighted to model Earth’s gravity on their interior, Pidge wouldn’t want to be hopping and stumbling around like the astronauts of her grandparents’ generation.

 

She hands the sample over to her father carefully, his eyes bright as he studies it. “Extraordinary.”

 

Pidge glances over at Shiro, who is doing his best to look anything more than politely interested, and smirks. “What? Not impressed?”

 

Shiro looks down at her, and shrugs ungainly against the bulk of his suit. “You guys get…a little more excited about ice samples than I do. I understand their value, but it’s not exactly my area.”

 

“Yeah, yeah, motorboy.” Pidge rolls her eyes. “I get it, you’re only interested in things with an engine and that go really fast.”

 

“That’s—“ Shiro makes a face. “Ok, that’s only partially true. I also like…uh…” He trails off, brows furrowed, and Pidge grins. “…What do I like?” he finally asks, looking to Pidge in askance.

 

“Uh. Reading? Fixing Keith’s bike?” Pidge counts off on her fingers, squinting down at them. “That’s…you’re really bad at having non-work-related hobbies, dude.”

 

“Gee, thanks.”

 

“Oh! Me!” Pidge holds up a third finger triumphantly. “You like me!”

 

Shiro groans. “You’re my best friend, that’s a given—“

 

“You know what I like?” Pidge says, and then continues on before Shiro has the chance to respond. “I’ll tell you what I like. Motherfucking aliens, that’s what I like, Shiro.”

 

“And here we go again—“

 

“And that—“ Pidge points at the ice sample, “could be the key to finally proving their existence, right Dad?”

 

“Well,” her father says, looking quietly amused as he shifts the sample in his hands. “We certainly can’t rule anything out, all the way out here. And I’d hardly complain if one of these ice samples wanted to come along and solve my life’s—“ There’s a rumble all around them, rock vibrating slightly beneath their feet, and he pauses. “…What was that?”

 

“Earthquake?” Pidge asks as another rumble starts up, stronger than the last.

 

“Kerberos-quake?” Shiro mutters behind her, and she turns to tell him just how terrible that was, before the strongest shake yet occurs, throwing her off balance, and she yelps, falling forward.

 

“Pidge!” She catches herself on Shiro’s outstretched arm. “You okay?”

 

“I’m fine.” She shakes her head, trying to dispel the hair blocking her vision and the vague sense of dizziness she feels. “We should get back to the—“ She stops, caught up in the feeling of something suddenly _here_ , large and looming and right behind her, and slowly turns around as a ship comes into view.

 

For once, all her knowledge—all her calculations, her observations, her vast vocabulary, abandon her, and she is left with one thought, and one thought only.

 

That isn’t one of their ships.

 

“It can’t be…” She hears her father say, but it’s distant, muffled, as if he was underwater, and then all she can focus on is Shiro grabbing desperately at her arm, yanking her along.

 

“Run. _Run!_ ”

 

She runs.

 

It’s a rush of sudden sound, sudden movement that seems at odds with the serene stillness expected of space. All she can hear is the roaring noise of whatever is behind them, Shiro’s shouts, her own heavy breathing as she stumbles along in her suit, the previously steadying weight suddenly cumbersome.

 

There’s a sudden _pull_ behind them, around them, everything lit up purple, and Pidge screams as her feet suddenly leave the ground, flying up into the void of black above them. She hears both of the others yell her name, and she reaches out blindly for something, _anything_ —her father’s blurry form, the outstretched hand she knows is Shiro’s, only to find nothing.

 

 _Tractor beam,_ a detached, scientific part of her mind supplies for her. _I’m the smallest, so it’s natural I’d be the first picked up._

 

Sure enough, one of them—she thinks her father—flies up a moment after, Shiro caught up off the ground last.

 

They’re both shouting in panic, and Pidge thinks she should be screaming, too. Might already be screaming, or perhaps she’s forgotten to altogether, it’s impossible to tell, right now. She is not in control of the motion of her own body, of her senses.

 

Debris off the ground, caught up in the beam with them, catches on the side of Shiro’s helmet, scraping along, and she can only pray it hasn’t knocked it loose, hasn’t stolen his oxygen, before another rock slams into her own head.

 

The last thing she hears as it all goes black is the sound of her own voice tapering off, dying in her throat like a person hanged, condemned and left to die.

 

…Oh, so she had been screaming.

 

 

 

❀ ✿ ❀

 

 

 

 

The night Shiro gets offered the position of pilot for the Kerberos mission, Pidge drags him out drinking.

 

“Shots!” she announces loudly, placing them down on the bar, and Shiro winces. He’s the one person she knows who gets a headache just from _being_ in a bar. Normally, Pidge would have sympathy, as prone to migraines brought on from stress and lack of sleep as she is, but over time she’s come to accept this is an inevitability of taking Shiro out anywhere fun that isn’t space or flight themed. Luckily, the more alcohol Shiro gets in him, the more he seems to forget about his headache, or his apathy towards bars in general—enough to be willing to repeat the same cycle of misery, ecstasy, and then mild hangovers, occasionally, every few weeks, at least.

 

“What are those?” He picks one up cautiously, sniffing at it. “Whiskey?”

 

“Mhmm,” Pidge hums happily, sliding into the stool next to his. “Good brand, too.”

 

“I think I’ll just order one of those fruity cocktails,” Shiro says with an air of quiet distaste, sliding the shot glass back across to Pidge.

 

“Weak.” She downs them both, hers first and then Shiro’s, slamming the second empty glass down to the background of his horrified face.

 

“I don’t know how you do that,” he says, and she sticks her tongue out at him.

 

Drinking is just one of the many things they do together, but in very different ways. Shiro—perhaps still trying to live down the keg-stand days of his barely-twenties that Pidge remembers sneaking into at seventeen or so all too fondly—doesn’t like anything strong, anything that leaves too much of a burn behind. He finds his preferences in what is sweet, where the alcohol is masked by some more agreeable mix-in.

 

Pidge, meanwhile, relishes the burn. Chases the chemistry reacting in her own body, the poison her brain somehow just barely sustains, with fascination. Drinking is stupid, objectively. So naturally that only leads to the urge to categorize it, sample every flavor until she understands every urge and every predilection.

 

She watches Shiro order his cocktail in amusement, and waves her hand when the bartender looks to her. They both know how to take care of themselves—and each other, if they find it necessary. Shiro will sip his fruity drinks, and Pidge will knock back a couple shots before giving it a break and then nursing a beer or some watered down vodka-and-schnapps concoction for the rest of the night.

 

She’s an experimenter, not an idiot. If she takes it too far, makes herself too sick or poisons herself too permanently, she won’t be able to carry out the next test. She’s the extent of her own sample size, which means she has to make herself last.

 

“Remember when we were young,” she says languidly, swinging around on her stool and leaning on the bar, head tilting up to watch the ceiling, then Shiro. “And we’d party like the sun wouldn’t come up?”

 

“I remember going through a bottle of Advil every two months, yeah,” Shiro says dryly. “Besides you’re—I love the way you say that, _when we were young_. You’re not even legal to drink yet.”

 

“Shhh.” Pidge waves a hand. “Keep your voice down or you’ll get us kicked out. I worked hard on that I.D., Matt helped me pick the picture.”

 

“And what a great picture it is,” Shiro offers sarcastically, and Pidge levels a threatening eye at his drink. He pointedly moves it out of her reach, and after a moment, continues. “I still don’t get why you like bars so much. You’re _you_ —I can barely get you out of your room to go to the dining hall.”

 

“Are you kidding me?” She waves a hand. “Bars are the one place where I can get social stimulus without having to actually talk to or acknowledge anyone beyond the wonderful person providing my drink. It’s an observational heaven. At the Garrison I actually have to make _conversation_.” She shudders, and Shiro snorts.

 

“…It still feels weird being out here, with your parents knowing where we go.”

 

“Joys of being second-gen American,” Pidge says proudly. “Just enough Italian left over where a twenty-one plus drinking age seems like the dumbest thing in the world.”

 

“I guess.” Shiro wrinkles his nose. “Still just feels weird when my commanding officer knows I go out drinking with his daughter.”

 

“Shiro, you practically live in our house. You’re in Matt’s elementary school graduation picture, for crying out loud. Bit late for worrying about that sort of thing.” Shiro winces, and Pidge laughs, patting him on the shoulder. “Man. _Kerberos_. I can’t believe you’ll be locked up with only my dad and some poor communications officer for eight months.” She pauses, and at Shiro’s faintly proud, but still somber look, she grins. “Maybe I should suggest to Dad he bring his zero-gravity specialized Scrabble board along.”

 

“Oh god,” Shiro groans, dropping his face into his elbow against the bar. “Please, don’t.”

 

“Doing it,” Pidge says happily. After a long moment, she looks over to Shiro, curling her arms into a pillow on the bar for her to drop her head onto, sighing. “…It’ll be weird, without you here. It was going to be strange enough not having Dad around that long, but at least I’m used to him disappearing off for missions.” Shiro grunts morosely, and she hums. “Always got Matt, I suppose. And Mom. I’ll just spend more time around the house or something. Lucky we live so close.”

 

Shiro says nothing, stealing the discarded beer bottle of some other long-departed patron, and peeling habitually at the label in one of his little-seen nervous gestures. “It _will_ be weird.” There’s silence again, and Pidge is just starting to wonder if she’s expected to say something, before he continues, quiet and unsure. “You know they haven’t decided on a communications officer yet. You could always…throw your hat in the ring. They’re already worried about team compatibility—with a mission this long, and this important—and everyone knows we work well together.”

 

“Me?” Pidge snorts. “Please. Even if I wanted to—and I’m not saying I do—they’d never take me. I’m still a cadet.”

 

“Only while you finish up the last of your engineering credits.” Shiro points out sullenly, still not meeting her eyes. “You’ve been an officially marked communications officer for the better part of a year at this point. And there’s no one better at the job.”

 

Pidge blinks, surprised at the blunt honesty in his tone. “…You…really want me to apply, don’t you?”

 

Shiro shrugs, glaring down at the decimated bottle label. “It’d just be—it’d feel weird without you, alright? Like something was missing.”

 

Almost unconsciously, Pidge reaches across, snatching up the balled-up wrapper, freeing it from Shiro’s wrath and contemplating it, as if it might suddenly give her an answer to this new puzzle.

 

Of course, looking for solutions in beer bottle wrappers is neither scientific nor logical, so Pidge isn’t very surprised when it offers her none.

 

“…I guess we _do_ do most everything together, don’t we?” she offers softly. Shiro just shrugs again, avoiding both the answer and her eyes as he sits up and sips awkwardly at his drink. He doesn’t want to pressure her, to suggest her into something she doesn’t want to do. He also doesn’t want to go without her.

 

He’s always been stupidly good at expressly _not talking_ about his worries, especially when he thinks he’s burdening someone else with them. Luckily for him, while Pidge is no feelings expert, she _is_ a Shiro expert at this point, and very good at determining the logical end point to a problem.

 

“Yeah, okay,” she says unthinkingly. “Why not?” Shiro turns to look at her, still all kinds of conflicted mixed in with his hope, and she steals his drink easily, downing back the last of it, and when she slams it onto the bar next to the empty shot glasses, it sounds like a promise.

 

Kerberos. What could go wrong?

 

It’ll give her an amusing story to tell Matt when she gets rejected, at least.

 

 

 

❀ ✿ ❀

 

 

 

_…We come from a peaceful planet…_

 

Pidge comes to with a quiet gasp and a rush of aching pain along her left temple. She startles just ever so slightly—everything blurry and her suit feeling far, _far_ too heavy for either Kerberos or the conditions of their ship—before the weight of strong hands holding her arms behind her back, and Shiro’s muffled voice pleading somewhere off to her left, come to her attention, and she tenses, stills.

 

It doesn’t all come back so much in a rush as in a trickle of images, feeding into her brain like a lagging video on a bad connection as her quick, panicked breaths fog up the inside of her visor. The ship, the tractor beam, being dragged up and up and _away_ from Shiro and her father, the sudden crunch of the rock against her skull, all sliding through her mind and clicking into place.

 

For the first time in a long, _long_ time, Pidge feels true panic grip her, staring down into the abyss of the unknown. She’d come close, in their attempt to flee the inevitable on Kerberos, but had been too caught up in the immediacy of the situation. That was instinctive panic, raw and something close to animal.

 

This is a panic of exercised consideration. Of weighing up her circumstances and what little information she has available to her and ultimately coming up short—short of a plan, short of an idea, short of even a _clue_. She has no idea where she is—beyond somewhere she never was supposed to be—who has her, or what is going to happen.

 

Based on her position and her mode of capture, Pidge can only assume herself and the others are being held captives by a hostile extraterrestrial power. Which is not, she thinks a little hysterically, even _remotely_ fucking close to something the Garrison had prepared them for.

 

For Pidge, sorting all this out amongst the overwhelmed screeching in her head and the dull throb of pain above her eyes that signals either an impending migraine or a concussion feels like the work of hours. But it must only be moments, because one second Shiro is talking, stammering out a few desperate phrases on their behalf, before there’s a shuffle of movement, and Shiro’s cut-off yelp of pain as something strikes him.

 

At that she does stir, almost involuntarily jerking against the hold on her to turn and observe, check on Shiro’s condition—he was speaking, which means at least he hadn’t sustained any major head injuries, surely. In response there’s a tightening of the grip on her arms, an increase on the weight pressing down on her back, a boot maybe, and she buckles instinctively, head bowing to the ground and her whole body going taut but unmoving.

 

Eventually, after some further exchanges of words she can’t muddle out in the confused space of her brain beyond the disbelieving fact that it’s definitely _English_ , the grip holding Pidge shifts, moving as something like handcuffs with a rigid bar between them is shackled onto her wrists. Something takes hold of the bar, and begins to drag her backwards, assumedly out of the room. Rough sliding noises on her left and right are the only indication she has that the same is being done to her father and Shiro, she doesn’t dare look to confirm.

 

It’s not until they’re moving along some hallway, and the other dragging noises move past and ahead of her, that Pidge dares to tilt her head just slightly up, trying to catch sight of something beyond her own feet scraping along a metal floor.

 

She can only get glimpses, between long stretches of endless chrome and the shine of purple lighting coming from some undeterminable source. Flashes in windows of huge containment systems, layers upon layers of prisoners crammed into cages and moved about as if building blocks directed by a child. She sees whispers of floors upon floors of moving figures, all discernable only in the same shades of grey and purple, with splashes of red, outsizing any operation she’s ever seen at the Garrison.

 

She sees torture. She sees order. She sees cruelty. She sees control.

 

There’s the bark of voices above her head, and she yelps as she is dragged around a corner roughly, the quick turn putting a strain on her arms. But she doesn’t dare fight back, not at the risk of suffering the same fate as Shiro.

 

Observation is her greatest—her _only_ strength, right now. She must do what she does best, as she does at officer meetings, in Garrison dining halls and classrooms, even in shitty, dim-lit desert town bars.

 

Pidge watches. She grasps at every piece of data, commits to memory every variable she can spot, and above it all she is left with only one question, buzzing in the back of her dizzied, overwhelmed mind.

 

_Where the hell are we?_

 


	2. Dogwood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Those blank helmets watch her, and she grins back, a vicious line that is all bared teeth and the promise of a snarl, hands curling into fists even as the shackles cut deeper still into her now bared wrists and leave lines of red running down her arms.
> 
>  
> 
> She remembers being cornered at school, the same age as she was when the deer died, always targeted for being the freaky small kid who spoke too loud and too fast, and learning to give shit when she got it, and to never, ever let those that went after her see her frightened.
> 
>  
> 
> This is a far cry from middle school bullies, but even as her heart beats jackrabbit fast against her sternum, and her mind keeps trying to catalogue all these _things_ she doesn’t understand against the backdrop of _please don’t let me die yet please please please_ , it’s the best point of reference she’s got.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Dogwood: Durability](http://www.languageofflowers.com/flowermeaning.htm)

After what feels like an eternity of mere flashes of their surroundings and a continuous strain on her arms as she is dragged along, their captors bring Pidge and the others to one of the lowest decks in the structure.

 

Structure. Structure. It doesn’t feel like a specific enough word to encapsulate what contains her, and she rolls it around in her head over and over as the harsh scrape of her spacesuit grates along the metal floor. Structure—ship?

 

She thinks it might be a ship—knows whatever had stolen her from Kerberos had been a ship—but she isn’t sure if she’s still in the same vessel.

 

She isn’t really sure of a lot of things, right now.

 

Pidge doesn’t notice any indications of their nearing their destination at first, too caught up in trying to control her own panic while desperately cataloguing everything she sees, trying to map out the giant expanse around them. It’s not until they stop moving, the pain in her arms dulling with less of a pull, that she realizes they’ve reached their journey’s end.

 

There are voices above her head, which she assumes to belong to those that had moved her and the others, but caution still keeps her from moving her head to confirm her suspicion. The dialect is unfamiliar, distinctly not English anymore, nor any other language she can recognize, and she can only guess that whatever had allowed her to understand these… _aliens_ in the room where Shiro had made his ragged plea for their freedom is no longer available to her.

 

She’s not sure if she finds that a relief or not. Pidge has never believed that ignorance means bliss—knowledge has always, _always_ been her power—but knowing for certain now that wherever they are is so truly foreign they are cut off from any ability to communicate or understand is not much of a comfort, either.

 

There’s the bark of a word that rings like an order, and then Pidge is being moved again, dragged to a wall before being hoisted up with a rough movement that has her biting down on her lip so hard she tastes blood to keep from yelping and giving herself away. She is hung from something on the wall by the bar between her shackles, at just the right height where her toes skim just along the ground, unable to get a real grip, and the strain on her shoulders and the cut of metal into her wrists through the suit never ceases. She’s still careful not to struggle, watching cautiously from the corner of her eyes as her father is hung up next to her, and then Shiro, still missing his helmet and knocked out cold, on the other side of him.

 

And then they leave them, the door slamming shut with an ominous clang.

 

The lights flicker low, a power-saving mode she assumes, and she lets out a long, heavy breath—one part relief, one part terror.

 

There’s the faint press of a foot against her own, and she jerks in surprise, before it taps again, the side of an ankle against her toes, heavy and clunky with the weight of the suit, and she belatedly realizes it’s her father. She feels a special kind of stupid as she taps back, the edge of her foot knocking carefully against his shin.

 

She doesn’t know when her father woke up, or if he was conscious this whole time, but she does understand. No words. They—whoever _they_ are—can’t know they’re communicating.

 

At least, they can’t know what they say to each other. And if she could understand them, she has no doubt they have the capabilities of understanding her.

 

Rule one: don’t give a hostile power any more ammunition than they’ve already got.

 

Her father’s foot knocks against her own once more, a short, deliberate tap, then a longer press, and then several more of each, with deliberate pauses at certain points.

 

Morse code. Not their most subtle form of secret communication, when her father and her have built entire languages out of numbers that no one else can understand, but without even their hands free, this is the best they’ve got.

 

She just has to pray whatever is holding them can’t understand _that_ too.

 

 _Are you okay?_ her father spells out, and she closes her eyes tightly, trying to block out the splitting pain in her head and all the confusion still swimming behind her eyes.

 

 _Fine,_ she spells back, carefully angling her own foot and ignoring the sharp jolt each movement sends up her shoulders. Goddamn her short stature, she never thought it’d betray her in this particular way. _You?_

 

 _I’ll live,_ her father spells. She can almost hear him say it in that dry, sarcastic tone of his that she most absolutely inherited from him, and she has to bite back an entirely inappropriate chuckle.

 

 _Shiro?_ she asks, praying her father has a better angle to see if he’s alright, being next to him.

 

_He’ll live too. No bleeding, just out._

 

She sighs in relief.

 

 _Do you know where we are?_ It’s slow going, but she spells it out, pushing past her doubt her father understands any more about what’s going on than she does with a desperate hope. He’s her father; he knows everything. He always has. When she’s done she can almost see her father’s snort in the slight twitch of his shoulders.

 

_If the Garrison knew about this, they never told me._

The _if_ sticks with her, because her father always picks his words deliberately, and it’s clear that the _convenience_ of these things showing up exactly when they were on Kerberos is a paranoia not only she currently carries. Still…she works it over in her mind, considering the question from every angle and coming up blank.

 

_What purpose would us being taken serve?_

 

_None._

 

The “ _that I know of”_ Pidge can feel tacked onto the end of goes unspoken—or un-spelled, as it were.

 

Around them, the ship creaks, the groan of metals unknown above them ringing out, and Pidge shivers. It’s the belly of the beast, being trapped down here in the dark, without any idea of when the light will return. What if they just leave them down here to rot?

 

_Do you—_

She begins slowly, hesitantly, almost unwilling to spell out her fears but needing _something_ , some form of communication, to fill her mind.

 

 _Katie._ Her father cuts her off firmly with a sharp knock of his foot against her own, not enough to hurt, but firm enough to arrest her attention. _Need you to listen to me._ _Heard them talking, before Shiro. Going to take us to main fleet. Interrogate us. Catalogue us. Slaves._

 

Her father pauses, and she can almost feel him taking stock of their surroundings, listening to the echoes of the ship as she has been, in some desperate hope they might enlighten her. Now, she finds herself listening cautiously for some kind of new noise, an indication of whether their being stored here means transition to a new ship. _Don’t know what they want._ _Be careful._

 

The finality of the words shakes her, and as the creaking of the ship around them grows, it transforms into something new that she must have missed, but that her father did not. A whirring like that of an electric pulley, a promise of movement. She opens her mouth on instinct, choking on all the panicked words she shouldn’t stay—because she knows, she _knows_ , it’s the first rule, don’t give them more than they’ve got. She bites her tongue to try and silence them, and then screeches regardless as the room around them suddenly descends as a whole, moving like an enormous elevator in free-fall, traveling even lower still into the depths of whatever holds them.

 

Even through the muffle of their suits, the half-broken static of their comms, Pidge can hear her father’s sharp inhale, feel him tense next to her, and for a hysterical moment she is reminded of the elevator ride at Disneyland, the year Matt was finally tall enough for all the fast rides when they got there on vacation. He’d been so excited, after all the years he’d heard her talking about it, riling him up with ghost stories she knew weren’t real but had scared her silly when she’d been ten and seen the videos meant to tell the “history” of the ride for the first time, staring up at the TV screen with a gaping mouth still half-filled with baby teeth as they’d gone up and up and _up._

 

They’d dragged their father along, their mother outright refusing to set foot on that ride once more, and he’d been tense all the way up, waiting for the drop with a kind of apathetic foreboding as Pidge and Matt had giggled, shuffling in their seats.

 

When they fell, they’d both screamed loud and high, caught up in a kind of frenzied, delighted terror, riding the adrenaline all the way down, and on the second shuddering stop before the final drop, Matt had turned, burying his face in her shoulder as if that might hide him from the inevitability of the fall.

 

She’d been deliriously proud in that moment, and she hadn’t even fully been sure why. The big sister, showing her brother the joy of surrendering to a force greater than them while still knowing they’re completely safe, serving as the shield against a chosen danger.

 

Matt’s not here now.

 

This time they fall without that edge of exhilaration, descending not back to the safety of the ground and a chintzy gift shop but into the unknown, her father’s feet scraping desperately at the ground and Pidge’s toes skimming in panic, the pressure on her wrists gone with the weightlessness of the drop but still not free.

 

They free-fall into the deep, not even able to grab hands, and in that moment Pidge just wants to go back, wants to be Matt’s fearless sister, and not the little girl screaming in the dark.

 

She doesn’t want to die yet, out here in the middle of space. She wants to choose that ride with Matt at least one more time.

 

After what feels like an eternity, they suddenly come to a shuddering stop, Pidge choking on a whimper as all her weight is again forced back on her wrists. A faint hissing comes from somewhere outside of the room they’re being kept in, and then a series of dull clicks, like something locking into place. Pidge hangs limp for a long moment, her brain all white noise as it attempts to overcome the previous panic and reset itself. She focuses on the sounds, trying to catalogue them, figure out what’s going on outside of where they’re being held, and the memory of those containment systems she’d seen on the larger ship, moving huge storage containers and cages of slaves, slots into place.

 

Transportation to the main fleet, her father had said. They’d been loaded onto some ship like fucking _cargo_.

 

Next to her, her father’s breathing is unsteady, verging on terrified. He’s never handled heights or falls well, even when he was choosing them, and something like this would no doubt come perilously close to pushing him over the edge. She can’t imagine how he’s feeling right now. She wants to hug him, wants to bury under his chin and count his heartbeat while he counts hers, steady rhythms that can reassure them they’re alive.

 

But she can’t. She can’t even move.

 

Instead, she does the only thing she can, moves her foot in a steady rhythm of code against her father’s— _I’m here, we’re okay_ —over and over, until slowly she feels him begin to come down from the borderline panic attack. Her own heart thrums within her chest, reminding her of her own anxiety, but she pushes the thought away. Her father needs her.

 

When at last her father’s breathing evens out, she stops her foot’s movements, instead just keeping it securely tucked against her father’s own. They can’t feel body heat, with the suits between them, but it’s the thought that counts. The closest comfort they can achieve, right now.

 

Finally, her father’s foot shifts against her own, spelling out in Morse slowly: _Shiro’s still out cold. Lucky bastard._

Unable to help herself, Pidge giggles, just slightly. Next to her, her father’s shoulders shake with his own silent mirth, both of them overtaken with a kind of hysterical amusement in the face of knowing they expected to die mere minutes ago.

 

Almost _do_ still expect to die.

 

That thought sobers her, smothers her laughter quite quickly and leaves her biting at her lip until the perpetual scabs break open and blood stains her teeth once more. A nervous habit from childhood she never could shake. The taste of her blood is rancid and sour, but familiar in a strangely comforting way. If she cannot take stock in the known and understood around her, she must find it in her own body. It will provide her the calm before the storm.

 

…Just what is the storm, though?

 

Somewhere nearby, there’s a rumbling, like a heavy door being shifted open, and then footsteps, loud and heavy and coming toward them. She tenses, as does her father, and then his foot is moving against hers rapidly.

 

_Stay safe._

 

“Da—“ she chokes on the word, rule one forgotten as the noises come closer and she suddenly feels very, very afraid. She hasn’t even yet looked their captors in the face.

There’s a grinding, and light floods the container, bouncing off shadows looming in the entranceway. Her father’s foot never stops its movements, instead shifting into blurred, panicked communication, single letters rather than full words: _LV U KT._

 

_“Love you, Katie.”_

Her father repeats the letters, the aborted message, over and over as the shadows approach, melting into grey armor highlighted in red and hints of purple skin and _teeth_. _LV U KT LV U KT. LV U K—_

 

The first of the figures reaches for her, unhooking her from the wall like a paper doll, like she weighs nothing to it, and all rational thought, all pretense or illusion, is forgotten. She screams, struggling, yanking at her restraints and kicking out as they drag her away.

 

“No, no, no, _no_. Dad. _Dad—_ “

 

 _LV U KT_. Her father’s foot never stops tapping out the message, moving against the wall, the floor, instead, until they come for him too, roughly pulling him down as she loses sight of him.

 

 

 

 

❀ ✿ ❀

 

 

_  
_

When Pidge was ten, her father hit a deer with their Land Rover, coming home from her middle school’s open house. It was the first time she’d seen something die.

 

She’d been in the backseat at the time, squinting down at her latest book acquisition under the dim beam of the flickering flashlight her parents kept in the glove box, because her father always insisted that she couldn’t have the car’s actual lights on when he was driving at night, said it distracted him too much. She’d given him much grief for it over the years, but it was one of the few nights she’d been content to just accept the flashlight rather than argue with her mother until she eventually switched on the lights.

 

Pidge had been sitting in the middle, so that Matt could also look at the turning pages of the book, his tiny face shoved up against her bicep as he gazed down, bright eyes illuminated under the flashlight. He couldn’t read yet—at least, not enough to keep up with her—but he liked to pretend he could, liked the act of watching her read and mimicking engaging in the experience, and she was always weak to him.

 

It had been so sudden, the work of a moment. She’d been looking down at her book, turning the pages slowly as Matt half-dozed on her arm, jerking awake every few seconds in order to keep looking at the book before drifting off again, drooling down her elbow. It was too late for a four-year-old. He should have already been in bed, but he’d wanted to come and see her science class projects.

 

She’d heard her father shout a word that she already knew but her mother had strictly taught her not to repeat in polite company, the screech of the brakes, and then she’d glanced up in surprise just in time to see the deer, poised in the middle of the road and glassy eyes brightly reflecting the headlights, before their car collided with it. She’d been thrown forward with a cry, her seatbelt locking in firmly and keeping her from flying out of her seat, but cutting into her skin roughly as all her weight was suddenly pressed against it. Her messy hair that she’d lately been surreptitiously trying to avoid cutting for as long as possible had traveled with her, falling in her face where she was half-doubled over, and the first thing that had shaken her out of her stupor had been Matt’s crying.

 

Pidge had sat up gingerly, still winded but quickly shoving her hair out of her face in order to catch glimpses of Matt’s little face, red and tear-streaked, as he wailed in his booster seat next to her, the shock of it all too much for him.

 

There’d been heavy panting from the front, terrified gasps of air, and after a long moment her mother had croaked, “Kids, are you ok?” Pidge had already moved on instinct, unbuckling herself and then Matt, and pulling him carefully into her arms as he’d turned and buried his face into her neck, smearing snot and tears over her skin as he sobbed.

 

“We’re fine,” she’d said, not feeling her own mouth quite form the words. “Dad?”

 

He’d said nothing, skin ashen-white as he stared out onto the road ahead of them. When Pidge had repeated his name, he’d flinched, and then hurriedly unbuckled his seat, getting out of the car even as Pidge’s mother had reached for him, her quiet “Sam, don’t,” falling on deaf ears. There’d been glimpses of him at the side of the car, caught in the flickering of the flashlight as it rolled on the ground where it had fallen, and Pidge had watched as he’d shakily pressed a hand to his mouth, his whole frame trembling.

 

On some inexplicable instinct, Pidge had followed suit, grabbing her flashlight and opening her door as she’d scrambled out, still carrying Matt and ignoring her mother’s loud “Boys, no! Stay in the car!”

 

The beam of the flashlight had caught easily on the deer, all matted fur drenched in red and shattered bone that left limbs lying haphazardly in directions they were not meant to go. She’d been unable to move the light away, stuck on it with a kind of petrified, morbid fascination, and she hadn’t realized she’d been screaming until her father had turned quickly, ensnaring her in a hug and pressing her face to his shoulder, cradling her and Matt both as he kneeled there on the road.

 

“Don’t look,” he’d whispered, repeating a name over and over that Pidge had already long stopped referring to herself with in her head. “Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look.”

 

Later, much later, after they’d eventually gotten home and her mother had already put Matt to bed and plied Pidge’s still shaken father with a brandy, she’d sat across from her mother on the sofa, curled up in a ball and chin pressed to her knees, unable and unwilling to sleep.

 

“Why didn’t it move?” she’d asked, and her mother’s mouth had been a thin, white line as she’d carefully run her fingers through Pidge’s hair, trying to offer a comfort they both knew was currently impossible.

 

“Sometimes when wild animals see a bright light like that, they just freeze,” she’d said softly. “It’s not anybody’s fault, sweetie. It just…happens.”

 

Pidge hadn’t slept for many hours after that, unable to get that single glimpse of the animal out of her mind long enough to bring her mind to quiet.

 

Staring up at the bright lights of the place her captors bring her to, all Pidge can think about is that deer, trapped in the beam by a compulsion it could not shake, even as those lights ran it over and through.

 

She can’t get rid of the feeling she is, in this moment, the deer, and she keeps waiting for the coming collision.

 

The first thing they did once they brought her here—a room in all bright whites and sterile chrome that reminds her of the B-list science fiction movies her Dad and her would watch on Saturday nights and that puts in her mind words like _decontamination_ and _inspection_ —was take her suit. They’d literally cut it off her, once they’d re-shackled her to a bar in the center of the room, wickedly sharp shears working through the best of the Galaxy Garrison’s space-faring synthetic polymers like kitchen scissors through cheap cotton.

 

She’d snapped, baring her teeth, when one of the beings stripping her had finally seen fit to remove her helmet. There’d been a new, momentary kind of panic when it’d gone to do so, the fact that she’d already seen Shiro fine and breathing without his helmet within their captor’s ships forgotten as her brain immediately insisted that this was not her own ship, and therefore not _safe_ , and she’d seen fit to cover up her fear with aggression.

 

Similarly, she’d kicked and screamed, raising all the hell she could, when they’d had to unshackle her temporarily to cut her suit off her wrists and hands, even if it had ultimately achieved nothing. Her strength is nothing to theirs, and they’d quite easily re-shackled her.

 

She understands objectively the saner thing to do in the interests of her preserved existence is to be passive, compliant, but the exposing, searching lights here make her nervous in a different way from the dim ones of before, and she finds herself instinctively fighting back against them, against the brightness probing every inch of her. These are the headlights, and she knows how dangerous they can be. The darkness was almost safe, comparatively.

 

 _Almost._ She’s not an idiot. At least she can fully see them coming here, even if she’d rather not see them at all, as if that would change something.

 

Once they fully cut away her suit, they start on her undersuit, Pidge flinching every time cold metal brushes up against her skin. Afterwards, there’s only her bra and underwear, and then they take those too.

 

First they cut away her protection, and then her dignity.

 

Still, she refuses to cower under it, standing defiantly and glaring at the figures in front of her, bathed in white and chrome and red, always red, purple mouths moving. They’re all still wearing helmets, and that bugs her the most. She at least wants the power of looking whoever is doing this to her in the eyes.

 

Eyes tell you a lot about a person. Her father’s are kind, her mother’s warm. Shiro’s are trusting and mischievous in turn. Matt’s are a match for her own, but more open, freer. Pidge wants to know what her captors’ eyes tell her.

 

For a while they speak only in low voices, still in that language she cannot understand, nodding amongst themselves as they take scans and jot down notes. They don’t use paper, only tablets and computers that could put Earth’s to shame, and much as their technology fascinates her, Pidge refuses to openly gape at it. She is not some primitive creature, and she will not have them think she is.

 

She is a genius, stubborn and iron-willed, and if they give her the chance she _will_ bite all their heads off.

 

They don’t, and she doubts they will, but the thought at least makes her feel a little better as she stands there, all goose-pimpled, naked flesh on display for all to see.

 

Pidge thinks in many other scenarios the phrase here would be “like a prize pig”, but that doesn’t feel correct. Even with the barrier of those helmets, she doesn’t get the impression they’re watching her as if she’s anything worthwhile. Even a commodity has value. Right now she is a specimen, given the same attention she would give a dissected frog under the microscope in high school, and that alone is enough to send shivers down her spine.

 

She’s already pinned and beneath the scope, just dear God don’t let them decide to cut her open as well.

 

Those blank helmets watch her, and she grins back, a vicious line that is all bared teeth and the promise of a snarl, hands curling into fists even as the shackles cut deeper still into her now bared wrists and leave lines of red running down her arms.

 

She remembers being cornered at school, the same age as she was when the deer died, always targeted for being the freaky small kid who spoke too loud and too fast, and learning to give shit when she got it, and to never, ever let those that went after her see her frightened.

 

This is a far cry from middle school bullies, but even as her heart beats jackrabbit fast against her sternum, and her mind keeps trying to catalogue all these _things_ she doesn’t understand against the backdrop of _please don’t let me die yet please please please_ , it’s the best point of reference she’s got.

 

 _Rule one,_ she tells herself over and over, even as they finish their scans and one produces from a corner of the room what looks like a hose, turning ice-cold water on her that steals the air from her lungs and leaves her gasping, gaping like a fish.

 

_Don’t give them any more than they’ve already got._

 

She will not cower before them.

 

Decontamination, she thinks almost idly, when they finally turn the water off and she is left there hanging, shivering in the open as the cold dries on her skin and seems to settle in her bones. The kind of thing they kept those dingy emergency showers built into the corners of the lab rooms at the Garrison for, right next to the eye baths. For chemical spills, and the like. These beings have no way of knowing what contaminants she carries on her, what she could bring into their ships to infect others. It’s smart, in the kind of way that makes her all too aware if their situations were reversed she would likely do the same thing, and the clinical feeling of it all—their actions, her thoughts—scares her.

 

They don’t dry her, but the liquid seems to evaporate in mere minutes as she stands there, and she retroactively revises her original thought that it had been water. She knows water, knows the feel of drops of it clinging to her skin on hot summer days when she’d taken Matt to the community center pool, and it does not dry this quickly.

 

At least she doesn’t seem to be reacting to it, whatever it is. This would possibly be the worst time for her myriad of allergies to all things nature to kick in.

 

She’s just beginning to wonder what comes next, carefully eyeing the figures around her, when one steps forward, a large syringe in its hands. Pidge’s eyes widen, and that’s when she really begins to fight, screeching as the figures close in on her. Like _hell_ they’re sticking needles in her.

 

There’s the bark of an order, and two of the largest start forward and grab her legs, yanking them off the ground and stopping her from kicking out. She yells, twisting, and then wheezes in pain when all her weight is forced back onto her wrists, shredding the skin even further. One of those holding her angles her left leg, forcing it steady, and then there’s a burn of pain as the metal of the syringe bites through her upper thigh, then another, then another. The last needle is the largest, injecting not a liquid but something cold and hard under her skin that leaves a small lump there, and everything goes fuzzy for a moment, her vision fading out and her hearing ringing.

 

When it clears, her captors have released her legs, and she hears a voice off to the side say quietly, “Inoculations complete. Fetch the druid.”

 

She groans, trying to puzzle out what the fuck a druid is, before blinking, her mind shuddering to a halt.

 

Words. Her captors’ words.

 

She can understand what they’re saying again.

 

Whatever they gave her, whatever they put under her skin, must have included some kind of translator.

 

The part of her mind that never stops being a scientist whirs, in love with all the opportunities an instantaneous translator like this could provide the Garrison if they could get their hands on it, the things she could learn if she could get one on her table and take it apart, break it down to the working parts. The rest of her is just relieved she’s no longer barred from their words. Information has always been her strongest ally, after all.

 

At least, the relief lasts until a door slides open on the far wall, and another figure steps through, all dark robes that Pidge’s eyes follow up until she reaches its head, and a bone-white mask, lit up with glowing yellow eye-sockets, stares back at her.

 

There’s a kind of power wafting off of it Pidge has never felt before, and she shivers as it starts forward into the room, moving with sweeping grace as a clawed hand accepts a tablet from one of the others. The gaze of its mask never seems to move from her face, but it must be reading, because its finger moves over the device slowly, before handing it back. It continues forward to her again, and, unable to stop herself, Pidge leans back away from it, feet braced and shoulders tense even as the strain grows on her arms.

 

“System X-9-Y?” it asks in a hollow voice, managing to still make it sound more like a statement than a question. “What were you doing there?”

 

Pidge sets her jaw, glaring at the druid. Her father’s words ring in her head, but her stubbornness pushes back against them. She may not know what they want, but she’ll be damned if she gives them anything anyways, even accidentally. Whatever these things are, they’re dangerous, and she doesn’t want to give them any reason to decide to check out Earth as well.

 

The mask in front of her tilts slightly, a mockery of inquisitiveness. “ _What_ were you doing there?” it repeats more forcefully. “What were you looking for?”

 

The second question gives her pause, because they weren’t looking for anything, only gathering ice and rock samples from Kerberos, but if it’s a question the druid feels it needs to ask, it means their captors think they _were_ looking for something.

 

It means these beings are likely looking for something, too.

 

She only juts her chin forward, sneering at the druid, and it hisses, one of its hands shooting up to grab her face, claws cutting into her cheeks and jaw. Pidge yelps, and the grip tightens as suddenly she feels something pressing in on her head like the sudden bite of a migraine, all pressure and sharp jolts of agony. Her vision whites out, replaced by a litany of familiar images—the deer, her old school, the Garrison, family dinners, Shiro with her at the bar, Shiro grinning at her from across the Garrison workroom when they used to both break in, covered in grease and sweat with his wrench in his hands, Matt in the car the night of the collision, Matt smiling up at her on the rooftop the night their father left for another mission, Matt the day he was born, Matt, Matt, _Matt_.

 

Suddenly, the grip vanishes, along with the assault on her mind, and Pidge falls forward with a gasp, shuddering as her head hangs low between her still raised and shackled arms. She feels the druid step back, keenly aware of its presence now, and she manages to lift her head up enough to see it return to the other figures, moving like a ghost. “The scouting commander’s initial assessment was correct. These are only primitive scientists. They know nothing of use. Finish your work and then take it down to the gladiator pens.”

 

Somewhere out of the range of Pidge’s fuzzy vision, there’s the rustle of something shifting nervously. “This one is very small, compared to the others of its kind that were examined. Perhaps it would be better suited to the labor camps.”

 

“And one as puny as this would be better suited to hard labor? The camps are for the sick and old only. Your scans show this one is healthy, and young, just as the other you already sent down to the pens. If nothing else, it can be fodder to get the arena in the mood for a _real_ fight.”

 

The figures around the druid salute it, as if in agreement, and then it is gone, the door sliding closed behind it.

 

Pidge drops her head once it’s out of sight, her exhaustion at the mental invasion beginning to get the best of her, and the last thing she hears one of her captors say is “Well, someone get it a gladiator’s uniform,” before the darkness takes her once again.

 

 _Shiro,_ she thinks as her eyes slip shut. That must have been whom they were talking about.

 

What have they done to him?

 

 

 

❀ ✿ ❀

 

 

 

On the night of Pidge’s eighteenth birthday, Shiro shows up almost exactly at the stroke of midnight.

 

She’s watching the clock in her bedroom at home—because her birthday always coincides with spring break at the Garrison each year by some happy miracle she’s given up questioning—as it assures her it has indeed been her birthday for all of two minutes, when she hears the rumble of the car pull up outside. There’s no rock thumping at the window, because Shiro is Shiro and would be terrified of accidentally breaking it, but she moves towards it on instinct regardless, shoving it open and leaning out to see her best friend awkwardly clamber out of the driver’s seat, just slightly too tall for the cut of the roof of the rusty old Jeep.

 

“Since when did you have a car?” she calls down to him, and snickers when he jumps a clean foot in the air, whirling around in surprise before finally having the common sense to look up and spot her.

 

“I don’t,” he says, voice quiet but still able to carry in the stillness of the evening air. “I uh—I borrowed it from the Garrison?”

 

“You _stole_ _a car_ from the Garrison—“ Pidge begins incredulously—because Shiro’s personal moral codebook has always been strange and particular about what rules can and cannot be bended to begin with, but this is a new level of _weird_ —and Shiro cuts her off with a desperate, pleading wave of his hands.

 

“I didn’t steal it! It’s an old model kept in one of the storage garages no one ever goes into. I’ll bring it back tomorrow!”

 

“You, Shiro,” Pidge says, leaning out the window and eyeing him speculatively. “Are a wild man, and a thief. A thief at large.”

 

“I’m—“

 

“I’ll be right down,” she yells, and then pulls the window shut before Shiro can say any more to his defense.

 

They both know she’s more delighted with his little rule-breaking venture than anything, anyways.

 

Pidge grabs her good shoulder bag—the Star Wars print one her parents got her for her sixteenth—and her sweater, and heads for the door, scooping her hair up into a messy pony-bun as she goes. She’s halfway down the hall when she hears a door creak open, and then Matt’s voice, slightly sleepy but overwhelmingly curious, ask, “Where are you going?”

 

She turns to him. He’s not yet in his pajamas, still wearing his scuffed jeans and t-shirt, and while he yawns as she looks at him, the rumpled mess of his hair and the smudge of chocolate on his chin is evidence he’s not planning on heading to bed anytime soon. Pidge rather suspects if she peeks into his room she’ll find his usual Friday night arrangement: chocolate bars stolen from their mother’s stash on the top shelf in the kitchen they’re not supposed to know about, and a hoard of books ready for the reading.

 

“Out,” she says simply, holding up a hand to spin her house keys around her forefinger, as if in evidence. “Shiro’s borrowed a Garrison car.”

 

Matt blinks, pulling off a look that reeks of skepticism far more effectively than an eleven-year-old should be able to. “…Wild party?”

 

She snorts. “Sorry to burst your bubble, but no. We’re probably just going for pizza or to hit up an arcade or something.”

 

“Oh,” Matt pauses, glancing down and shuffling his feet for a moment. “…Can I come?”

 

Pidge hesitates for all of two seconds, and then nods. Matt grins, and disappears into his room, before reemerging with his coat on and backpack in hand, quickly stuffing chocolate bars into it as he goes. He takes her outstretched hand when she offers it, and together they scamper down the stairs and to the front door, Pidge making sure to pull it firmly shut so that it locks behind them once they’re out.

 

When Pidge reaches the car, yanking open the passenger door, Shiro looks up from his phone, already sitting back in the driver’s seat. “So I’m thinking we can go see our first _legal_ R-18 movie, without me having to worry about both of us getting kicked out because you snuck—“

 

“Matt’s coming,” Pidge says without preamble, climbing in as behind them she hears the door to the backseat open, Matt tossing his backpack into the car and then following suit.

 

“Oh,” Shiro blinks. “No movie I guess then—“

 

“I wanna see an R movie!” Matt yells from the backseat, throwing up his arms, and Pidge whoops, leaning back to give him a high five.

 

“That’s my boy!”

 

Shiro just sighs. “So much for not breaking the law…” he says mournfully.

 

“I’m at least ninety percent sure sneaking into an R movie isn’t actually a prosecutable offense, Shiro,” Pidge offers, though it does little to combat the abject misery on Shiro’s face as he starts the car, and pulls out of the driveway.

 

“You say that _now_.”

 

When they reach the theater, it’s a frantic whispering debate about what to see, largely with Pidge and Matt on one end and Shiro adamantly hissing that _he’s not taking an eleven-year-old into that—and no, Matt, it doesn’t matter that you’re **nearly** twelve—_ on the other, as the tired-looking person in the ticket booth stares at them skeptically, just out of earshot. After a rather violent game of rock-paper-scissors, that Shiro loses, he hangs his head, and goes to buy three tickets for the animated children’s movie showing the same time as Pidge’s movie of choice.

 

Matt scrunches up his nose as they watch Shiro buy the tickets, grabbing Pidge’s sleeve and tugging until she bends down, Matt hopping up onto his toes to whisper into her ear, “I thought we were going to a _cool_ movie. We’re not _really_ going to see that, right?”

 

Pidge snorts. “No. Trust me, I’ve been doing this since I was your age—you buy a ticket for one movie showing at the same time, and then go into the theater for the movie you _actually_ want to see. Works like a charm.”

 

“Wow,” Matt’s eyes are wide and delighted, and she pats him on the head.

 

“Trust me, Matty. If a rule can be in any way broken or exploited, I’ve found it.”

 

“Alright,” Shiro says mournfully, coming back and dolling out the tickets. “We’ve got them.”

 

“Yeah!” Matt cheers, taking his ticket, and then turns and sprints for the main door to the theater, shoving it open. “I want popcorn!”

 

Pidge blinks, patting down her pockets, and makes an irritated noise. “I forgot my wallet, he’s going to have to live without the popcorn. Sorry, I’ll pay you back for the tickets next week.”

 

Shiro looks at her skeptically, even as he starts towards the door, Pidge trailing after him. “It’s your birthday, my treat. Food is, too.”

 

“But—“

 

“You really want to tell Matt he can’t have popcorn?”

 

She sighs. “Fine.”

 

They get into the line for food behind Matt, her brother practically vibrating with excitement, and Shiro stares down at him carefully. “…Are you sure this is a good idea?”

 

“It’s Mad Max, Shiro,” Pidge says, waving a hand. “I’ve seen all the previous reboots. They’re pretty tame. Nothing worse than the shit Matt sees playing my old video games, at least.”

 

“If you say so,” Shiro says, sounding dubious, and she pats him sympathetically on the shoulder.

 

As they near the front of the line, Pidge decides to take pity on him, and says, “…You know there’s not actually such a thing as an R-18 movie, right?”

 

“…What?” Shiro asks, voice dangerously flat.

 

“There’s only R and NC-17,” she holds up two fingers for emphasis. “There aren’t actually any movies you can’t see before eighteen. Save like, renting porn or something.”

 

“ _What?!_ ” Shiro repeats, his outraged yelp echoing around the room, and he shrinks down awkwardly when a few people around them glance at him openly, before looking back to Pidge with a deeply betrayed expression on his face. “All this time—you had me convinced _for_ _years_ —“

 

“It was funny!” Pidge says, shrugging, and the look Shiro gives her is one part murderous, one part entirely mopey.

 

“ A whole _year_ ,” he mutters, watching sullenly as the person in front of them pays the cashier, and they step to the front of the line. “I spent a whole year living in paranoia every time we went into an R-rated movie for _nothing_.”

 

“Hey, look on the bright side,” Pidge says, managing to stifle her laughter if not the wide grin on her face. “You’re not helping Matt sneak into a movie he’s six years too young for. Just one he’s five years too young for.” Shiro only offers a mournful groan in response, and she snickers. “Order your food, dude.”

 

Shiro sighs heavily, but does so. Pidge doesn’t really pay attention, trusting Shiro to order Matt a big enough popcorn to keep him happy as she fishes out her phone and sends a quick text to her dad letting him know Matt’s with her just in case their parents didn’t hear them both leaving, until Shiro shoves an extra-large Diet Coke into her hands, causing her to nearly drop her phone for a moment as she flails before managing to get her grip on both. “What—“ she begins, before the siren call of the Coke wins over, and she cuts herself off to stick the straw in her mouth and take the largest sip she can humanely manage. By the time she swallows and looks up, ready to rephrase her question, Shiro’s grinning down at her.

 

“There, I’ve done my friend-duty and fed your terrible soda addiction for the day. Happy birthday.”

 

“I love you,” Pidge says fervently, and Shiro snorts as she promptly sticks the straw back in her mouth. Pidge watches, still slurping her soda, as the cashier shovels out a frankly outrageously enormous bag of popcorn and hands it to Shiro, who in turn passes it to Matt, her brother’s eyes wide and delighted as he takes it.

 

“Did he give you extra? I think he gave you extra,” she says as they get their tickets checked, and then walk straight past the theater they’re meant to go into, headed for the one showing what they’re actually here for. “He was cute, objectively. You should have gotten his number.”

 

Shiro gives her a scandalized look. “I’m not dating someone just so you can get free soda when we come to the movies.”

 

Pidge points her soda accusingly at him. “Okay, no, correct me if I’m wrong, but am I or am I not talking to the man who dated that astronomer guy last year just to get access to his telescope—“

 

“That was different!” Shiro hisses, and Matt turns around from in front of them, awkwardly walking backwards as he shovels popcorn into his mouth and stares up at them both.

 

“Shiro _dates_ people?” he asks incredulously, as if he’d never heard something so ridiculous in all his life, and Pidge nearly doubles over wheezing at the utterly wounded look on Shiro’s face, as if Matt had just turned around and shot him in cold blood.

 

“Every day I become more and more convinced you’re not Pidge’s brother, but just her mini-clone,” he tells Matt despondently, and Pidge watches as her brother just grins and offers Shiro a handful of popcorn.

 

It’s quiet inside the theater, already dark, and the three of them make quite a procession of fumbling up the stairs and into the middle of their row of choice, before Shiro finally has the sense to pull out his phone and turn on its flashlight, looking relieved when the few other patrons in the theater don’t even glance over at them. They pick their seats, and sit down as a row, Matt clutching his popcorn like a lifeline and face slack as he immediately turns his attention to the playing trailers. Pidge wedges her drink into the cup holder, having to wiggle it a bit to make it fit, and then turns to Shiro, leaning over to mumble into his ear.

 

“Thanks for letting me bring Matt along. Means a lot.”

 

“’Course,” Shiro says, and when he makes a grabby gesture at Pidge’s soda, she just rolls her eyes and hands it to him. “Good birthday?”

 

“The movie hasn’t even started yet,” she points out, and when Shiro goes to respond there’s a loud shushing noise, and Matt throws a piece of popcorn at them, the piece bouncing off Shiro’s forehead before landing in his lap. Shiro blinks down at it, looking surprised, and Pidge just sighs and leans over towards Matt, ignoring his yelp of protest when she steals a large handful of his popcorn.

 

“Great birthday,” she says.

 

 

 

❀ ✿ ❀

 

 

 

“—idge. Pidge!”

 

The first thing Pidge feels is hands on her, shaking her upper arms gently, and a voice calling her name. There’s the splash of something warm and wet on her cheek, and she frowns—tears? Why are there tears? The voice says her name again, rough and familiar in a way that makes something in her chest ache, and she latches onto it, using it to pull herself out of the darkness.

 

Slowly, she opens her eyes, and then winces at the lights above her, dim and dingy but still painfully bright compared to the warm black she’d been engulfed in moments ago, before a face, ashen-pale in fear and lined with shaggy black bangs, blocks them out. She blinks, her vision swimming, and as it slowly settles, the person’s features come into clarity.

 

“Shiro?” she croaks, and he breathes out a heavy sigh, lifting a shaky hand and wiping messily at his red-rimmed eyes.

 

“Pidge, thank God. I—I thought you were dead.”

 

From somewhere to their left, a new voice rings out, sharp and irritated. “Why would they chuck ‘em down here if they were already dead? Use your head.”

 

Shiro’s face tilts up and away from her, glaring at the direction of the voice. “They could have hurt her without realizing.”

 

“Wha—“ Pidge begins, starting to sit up even as Shiro turns back to her with worried eyes, trying to get her to lie still, before something turns sharply in her stomach and she gags, quickly twisting onto her side and proceeding to chuck up what little of her breakfast must have been left in her system. She groans once she’s finished, slumped over weakly on her elbows to keep her face from landing back in her own mess, her head ringing in a way it hasn’t since the migraines she used to get as a child. Shiro fusses next to her, grabbing her gently and trying to get her to lie down again. She waves him off, dizzily pushing herself up into a sitting position, uncoordinatedly shuffling away from her vomit, before she collapses again, falling against Shiro’s side and closing her eyes as the lights once more assault her vision and just make her head hurt worse.

 

“Shit. What’s—what’s happening?” Shiro’s voice is loud and panicked, and she whines, turning enough to bury her face against the closest available part of his body, she thinks it might be his arm. “What’s wrong with her?”

 

“ _’Her’_ is right here, thank you very much,” Pidge slurs. Shiro doesn’t respond, only tries to wiggle his fingers between her face and his arm to check her temperature, earning himself a displeased grunt as she stubbornly presses her face even closer to his bicep.

 

There’s the sound of steps, echoing unbearably given her currently sensitive hearing, and then a shuffle of movement as someone bends down, assumedly inspecting her. “Looks like quintessence exposure sickness,” a scratchy voice says, with a cadence that reminds Pidge of her chain-smoking Aunt Vivian. “Some people get like this after interrogation. The better the mind, the harder to crack. The harder to crack, the more painful it is when the Druid finally gets in. Girl’s obviously got one hell of a head on her. Better than yours, at least.”

 

“Of course she does,” Shiro mutters softly, running a hand through Pidge’s hair. He says nothing else, as does neither of the other voices, obviously meaning to give Pidge some time to come to her senses. Once the pain in her head fades enough that she can start to hear herself think, she speaks, face still pressed to Shiro’s arm, not yet ready to risk the light once more.

 

“Where are we?”

 

“Gladiator pits,” the first voice says, not unkindly, but decidedly not sympathetically either. “The place the Galra keep all the pour souls who aren’t lucky enough to score some other duty. And this ain’t the Champion’s cage, either. You’re stuck with the rest of the fodder used to keep the arena nice and blood-drenched for the real killers.”

 

“ _Mazlo_ ,” the second voice hisses firmly. “That’s _enough_. Poor kid’s probably scared out of her mind already without you running your mouth.”

 

Pidge grunts, flinging an arm up in the direction of the first speaker and flipping them off. After a moment, she remembers that whoever’s speaking is unlikely to recognize what she’s doing, and grimaces, saying loudly, “That means _fuck you_ , for the record.”

 

There’s a snort from what she thinks is the first voice, and the second says, “Oh, honey, I like you,” low and delighted.

 

Pidge grins against Shiro’s arm despite herself, mentally rewinding everything that was said to her, before catching on one word. “…Galra?”

 

“Apparently the name of the ones who took us,” Shiro says. “The Galra Empire.” The words make the air around them suddenly seem cold, and Pidge shivers, trying to drive the images of purple and teeth and those white, white, _white_ walls against the dark robes of the druid from her mind. There’s a pause, and then Shiro shifts, turning enough to rest his head on top of hers, burying his face in her hair. “ _Jesus,_ Pidge, I woke up and you and Sam were just _gone_. I thought I’d never see you again.” The naked fear in his voice stills her, and when he sniffles, she quickly reaches up, blindly patting at his face.

 

“Hey, hey, no. I’m fine. I’m right here, see? They didn’t do anything to me I can’t handle.”

 

Shiro exhales slowly, his own hand coming up to cover hers. “I was so _scared_ ,” he admits, and it hits Pidge like a punch to the gut, not just for the unusualness of Shiro confessing such a thing, but also for how it reminds her of the fall and her father and hers frantic attempts to communicate in code before they’d been ripped apart, and then the white and the Druid and—no. She stops herself, inhaling carefully, and then counting her breathing out.

 

“I was, too,” she whispers, her father’s final message to her still echoing against her foot like a ghost, and she wonders if they shouldn’t still be communicating only in code, before pushing the thought aside. She doubts it will make a difference now, sounds like they’re not exactly in a high-security part of…wherever they are.

 

“I still don’t understand how you’re here,” Shiro mumbles against her hair, sounding so confused. He shifts, his cheek lying against her head instead, presumably to look to one of the room’s other occupants. “I thought the pits were for male prisoners?”

 

“Technically, yes,” the second voice says dryly. “But the Galra are brutes, and idiots to boot. It’s not as if they sit down for a nice chat and ask every prisoner of war they snatch up what their gender is, so much as strip them down and hazard their best guess based on whatever it is they’ve got going on under those uniforms. How do you think _I_ ended up here?”

 

There’s a gagging noise from the direction of the first voice. “Great, now I’m just trying to picture what a Galra’s junk looks like.”

 

“Oh, grow up, Mazlo,” the second voice says irritably. “We both know you’ve slept with worse things.” The other makes an offended noise, but the second voice ignores them, shuffling closer still, and Pidge feels a gentle finger tap the side of her head. “Here, dear, let me get a good look at you.”

 

Hesitantly, Pidge turns her face towards them, wincing at the lights, before her vision focuses on the speaker, and feels herself gape. They’d look almost human, if it weren’t for the deep blue skin, six blank green eyes, and sharply pointed, long ears.

 

One of four arms retracts from where it had touched her, and she shivers. Okay, not so human, then.

 

“You’re an alien,” she mutters dumbly, and they sigh, rocking back on their heels where they’re crouched until they’re sitting across from her, four arms folding.

 

“Ah, so you’re from one of _those_ planets. Suppose that explains big and beefy’s little freak out when he got in here earlier.” Pidge just blinks, feeling slow and stupid, and something in the alien’s expression softens. “Oh, it’s alright, dear. You’re not the first one. The Galra have snapped up plenty of isolated planets before. You get used to it all eventually.” Despite their eyes having no visible pupils or irises, Pidge still feels like she can sense their gaze flickering over her face. “You’re _vishtaza_ , aren’t you?”

 

“…What?”

 

The alien frowns, clearly realizing their words aren’t translating correctly. “Mmmm…butterfly?” they say carefully, and Pidge wonders what the hell they actually said for the translator to decide b _utterfly_ was the closest substitution. The alien makes a fluttering motion with two of their hands, before gesturing between Pidge and themself. “You should not be here, just like me. The Galra looked but they did not _see_.”

 

“You mean—“ Pidge furrows her eyebrows, trying to puzzle out the alien’s meaning, before it clicks into place, and her expression evens out. She nods. “Ah. Yeah, I’m trans.”

 

“Trans,” the alien says slowly, carefully edging over the pronunciation. “Is that your people’s word for it? Interesting.” They— _she_ nods decisively in turn. “I am Delphine.” One of her hands gestures expansively to her left, and Pidge glances over to see another alien of a similar appearance to Delphine glowering in the corner. “My brother, Mazlo.”

 

Pidge shifts, sitting up more fully and waving off Shiro’s hands when he tries to steady her. “I’m Pidge, that’s Shiro.”

 

Delphine studies them both. “Family or partner?”

 

Pidge snorts, shaking her head. “Neither. Friend.” Hesitantly, she casts a glance around the room, eyes skimming over a couple other dozen faces of what look like varying species within the room, all crowded near the walls and eyeing her and Shiro warily. At any other time, she’d be fascinated, a lifetime of wishing and searching for alien life and here it is in a plethora of variety right at her fingertips, but now she just watches them carefully. Given her first experience with aliens was being kidnapped off a moon and then being restrained, stripped naked, and hosed down, she thinks it’s kind of reasonable to feel suspicious of everyone that isn’t Shiro right now, no matter how friendly Delphine, at least, is being.

 

“…Dad’s not here,” she says softly once she’s finished her scan of the room, and while she’d already known objectively he wasn’t, because if he had been he would have been _there_ with her from the moment she woke up, she still feels her heart sink.

 

“No, Pidge,” Shiro says. “I’m sorry, he isn’t.”

 

“If he’s not here, he’s either dead or on route to a labor camp,” Mazlo says, still from his corner, and Pidge glares at him.

 

“My father’s not dead.”

 

“Then he’s likely headed for a labor camp,” Delphine interjects smoothly. “That’s where they send many of the older prisoners, if they’re no good for fighting. They sent our mother to one, after they took our planet. She was too old for…the other uses they find for many female prisoners.” Pidge glances over sharply at her, and Delphine grimaces. “I know our being here is an insult to our very being, Pidge, but one might still consider it luck over ending up where the other women are taken.”

 

Mazlo makes a disgruntled noise. “At least you’d live.”

 

Delphine cuts him an ice-cold stare, her entire posture ridged and unyielding as she stands. “Better to die in the arena than end up some washed-up old general’s toy. I am no one’s pet, Mazlo. I’d sooner put the blade across my throat myself.” She blinks, all six eyes closing and opening in unison, before she appears to remember Shiro and Pidge, glancing down at them awkwardly. “Apologies. You should…sleep. We never know which storage pit they will crack open for the next day’s fights. You’ll need your rest. Take the empty spot at the wall Mazlo’s by. No one should bother you.”

 

“Thank you,” Shiro whispers, and Delphine leaves them, stalking over to her brother and whacking him gently upside the head with one hand before the two fall into a furiously hissed argument, their eight arms between them gesturing in tight, restrained movements.

 

“Come on,” Shiro says gently after a moment, getting to his feet and carefully pulling up Pidge with him. “Can you walk?”

 

“I’m not an invalid,” Pidge mutters, taking several slow steps towards the area Delphine had indicated, steadying herself on Shiro’s arm when the dizziness returns, working in combination with the pain in her head that had never quite abated.

 

“Yeah, but I had that thing in my head, too. Not fun. And like she said, the better the mind, the worse it is.”

 

“Your mind’s fine,” Pidge snorts, finally managing to stagger to the wall and collapse against it, sinking down until she can wrap her arms around her knees, bury her head between them. She feels Shiro sit down next to her, hands fluttering and hesitating, until she knocks him gently with her shoulder and he sighs, laying an arm over her shoulders and dipping his head to rest on top of hers. “I wouldn’t have stuck with you this long if it wasn’t.”

 

“Gee, thanks,” Shiro says dryly, and it’s so like their casual banter that Pidge almost wants to laugh, until she remembers where they are, and her throat dries up.

 

“…This can’t be real, can it?” she asks softly, mindful of not wanting to be overheard.

 

“…Feels pretty real to me,” Shiro says heavily.

 

Pidge sniffles, and is dismayed when she feels tears drip down her face, catch on the end of her nose. “I—I thought I was going to die, Shiro.” She laughs shakily, without humor. “Then again, from the sounds of things, we both still might.”

 

Shiro just turns, wrapping his other arm around her and encompassing her form with his as if that might block it all out. “You won’t,” he says to her firmly, and the _you_ rather than _we_ isn’t lost on her in the slightest. “You’ll be okay, Pidge. I promise. You’re the strongest person I know.”

 

She sniffles, and in that moment hates herself for feeling so _weak_. “What about Dad?”

 

Shiro tenses. “We’ll get him back.” His voice is firm, broking no arguments, as if he can make her father appear just by belief alone, and Pidge can only nod shakily, closing her eyes to it all as she feels Shiro sigh against her hair, repeating his words.

 

“We’ll get him back.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Logan drew some [Delphine sketches for me](http://pastel-clark.tumblr.com/post/173133474612/corpuscorvus-i-forgot-the-freckles-d-my) because he continues to be the light of my life.


	3. Oak Leaves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Pidge, look out!” Delphine shrieks, letting go of her and diving for cover, and it’s all the warning she gets before Shiro is there in front of her, swinging the blade down in a sweeping arc aimed at her legs. Moving on instinct, she throws herself out of the way, hitting the ground and tumbling roughly, but thankfully missing the edge of Shiro’s blade. She rolls to a stop, glad she’d thought to bandage her palms as she pushes herself up as quickly as she can manage and jumps to her feet. Across from her, Shiro watches her, fingers twitching along the blade’s handle and something pained and unreadable on his face.
> 
> “Dude,” she says with all the feeling she can muster, “what the _fuck?_ ” 
> 
> “Hold still,” Shiro says, and sweeps forward again, blade swinging wildly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Oak Leaves: Bravery](http://www.languageofflowers.com/flowermeaning.htm)

It takes three days for the Galra to come for them.

 

In that time, Pidge does her best to adapt. To adapt to being in such a small, cramped space and surrounded by strangers, with nowhere to go to and only those four walls lit up in dim purple light to stare at. To adapt to the only food she gets being a mushy, tasteless gruel that is, surprise surprise, _also_ purple, delivered once daily through a slot at the bottom of the wall that has seams where Pidge assumes the door must be. To adapt to having to relieve herself in a shallow basin set into an alcove in the room they all have to share.

 

Thank God for Shiro. She rather suspects she’d have lost her grip on things by now otherwise—and quite sure he’d have lost his without her, if she’s being honest. They watch each other’s backs every moment, knowing full well the only ones they can trust, _really_ trust, are each other; sleep curled up around each other, so that one can’t be moved without the other noticing, move as a pair, stand at the other’s back as both shield and guard dog when one must duck into the little alcove where the basin is.

 

They look out for each other, as they have since they first met—the Garrison’s smallest, snarkiest genius, who cared only for her projects and not her classmates, and the beloved prodigy pilot without a real friend in the world.

 

And so they persevere to figure out their situation, the best they can.

 

The one thing Pidge _can’t_ adjust to is the smell. The room reeks of unwashed bodies, filth and the iron tinge of blood, of death. A skunk had died in her grandmother’s garden once, a summer Pidge had been there visiting as a child, and when they’d finally found the source of the rotting odor, hidden between the rose bushes, Pidge had thought she’d never smell something so vile. She was wrong—so, so wrong.

 

If hopelessness has a smell, it’s this.

 

“You’ll get used to it,” Delphine tells her passively, when she eventually admits to her thoughts. The alien has continued to be as indiscriminately friendly to Pidge as she was during that first encounter, and while Pidge still doesn’t trust her, per se, she does her best to reciprocate. Never a bad thing to have another ally, in a situation filled with this many unknowns, and Delphine is a good source for information, if nothing else. Delphine, at least, just seems happy to finally have another girl to speak to. “At first, it reeks to all the high places, but after a while it’s just normal. Like a _xelzarj_ living in its own shit. You stop noticing.”

 

Pidge shudders. “I doubt it.”

 

From Delphine’s other side, where they all sit against the wall, Mazlo snorts. It hasn’t taken Pidge long to realize that’s a common thing with him. He’s kind of an asshole, but a passive one, and at least he talks. Half the occupants of the room still haven’t said a word to either her or Shiro, out of fear or…something. “You stay long enough in a place like this, you get used to anything.”

 

“How long _have_ you been here?” Pidge asks, tilting her head. Shiro is napping at her side, dozing off on her shoulder, the sedate inability to move like he normally does for hours on end having finally gotten to him, and almost unconsciously she reaches up to brush his bangs out of his face, just to give her hands something to do.

 

Delphine makes a face, thin nose scrunching up as she calculates it. “Seven or eight weeks? Not long, but longer than many.” Pidge takes a spare moment to be thankful that Delphine’s species has a word similar enough to week to translate, even as her words—the time given, or lack of it—hits Pidge like a punch to the gut.

 

“And you never think about escaping?” It’s one of the things Pidge noticed rather quickly, the last couple days. As she and Shiro whispered in hushed voices or tapped out plans against each other’s palms in Morse code, as she searched the edges of the room, running her fingers along every seam and every crack to try and find a weak spot to force open. No one else does the same. They just sit there, and talk quietly or simply sleep. There is no waiting rebellion here.

 

“Think? Of course.” Delphine shrugs, an apparently universal gesture. “But only as dreams. No one escapes the Galra Empire. Once they take you, it’s over. You die immediately, or you work or fight, and die later.”

 

“There’s nowhere to go back to anyways,” Mazlo mutters sourly. “Our planet will either be colonized, if the Galra find resources on it worth harvesting, or they’ll raze it to the ground, ‘til even our soil is useless. They’re not keen about leaving planets spare to potentially be snapped up by some insurgent rebel force or another.”

 

“…I’m sorry,” Pidge whispers, unable to think of anything else to say. Such things have never really been a concern of hers—at least, not until lately, because God if the thought of the Galra going to Earth next doesn’t keep her up at all hours—and it’s hard to imagine growing up with fears like that, let alone accepting them as an unchangeable reality.

 

Delphine and Mazlo both just shrug again, in unison. An unspoken _it is what it is_.

 

“But there _are_ rebel forces?” Pidge presses on, because she has to _know_ , has to know everything she can if she ever hopes to get herself and Shiro out of here.

 

“There are…whispers,” Delphine says quietly, looking to Mazlo beseechingly. He just shakes his head, and she sighs. “They say there are, at least. Warrior planets that were never taken, or small camps of survivors from Galra-captured planets, there are even some that believe there’s a fractional force of Galra themselves looking to take down the Empire from the inside. They’re all mostly just stories. What few rebellion forces that do pop up usually get wiped out of existence pretty quickly.”

 

“Squished,” Mazlo says for added effect, smacking two of his palms together as if they were the Galra forces coming down on some poor group of rebels. The sound reverberates throughout the room, not even getting a stir from most of it, and for a long moment after there is silence.

 

Shiro snores slightly in his sleep, and Pidge sighs, readjusting his position on her shoulder. “…What do they look like, the Galra? _Really_ look like?”

 

Delphine shivers, the invisible track of her eyes seeming to shift from Pidge to the far wall, the one with the door seams, as if looking for something that isn’t currently there. “Cruel,” she supplies shortly.

 

“Purple bastards,” Mazlo adds helpfully. “Big, ugly, purple bastards.”

 

“They come in many shapes, Pidge.” Delphine says softly. “And none of them good, though they do carry a few easily defining characteristics.”

 

“And let me guess,” Pidge says sarcastically. “One of those is being purple?”

 

Mazlo makes what Pidge thinks might be the alien equivalent of a finger gun at her, and Delphine continues on. “And the eyes. Those yellow, empty eyes.” She blinks, turning back to Pidge. “Our kind share the unfortunate destiny of having eyes quite similar to the Galra, save the color, but we have one thing they do not.” Delphine smiles, a grim, jagged-edged line. “You can look at us and see we have hearts. Souls. The eyes of the Galra carry no such things inside of them.”

 

“But mostly they’re just ugly!” Mazlo finishes cheerfully, ignoring the shove his sister gives him for it.

 

Pidge frowns, going to respond, when suddenly there’s a loud scraping noise from across the room, and she whips her head around to see the seams she’d picked out finally sliding open, every grating inch revealing more and more of those standing outside—two Galra soldiers, and three of the fully metallic figures without a hint of purple that Delphine had called sentries. Robots.

 

Next to her, Shiro jerks, startling from his sleep and sitting up, looking around wildly. “Whazzit…? What’s going on?”

 

“The gathering for the day’s battles,” Delphine breathes softly in response, her entire posture rigid as she watches the door finish sliding open.

 

One of the Galra steps forward, and the rest level their blasters. Pidge stares warily at them, looking for an opening even as she knows a barely awake Shiro is in no state to suddenly duck and run. A hand touches her own fisted one on the ground, and Pidge startles, glancing over to Delphine, who shakes her head slightly, subtly. _Don’t_.

 

“All right, then.” the lead Galra snaps, loading up his own blaster and pointing it directly at Shiro. Pidge freezes, and gently slides her hand out from under Delphine’s. The Galra isn’t smiling, even looks bored, but Pidge pictures a smugness in his voice anyways. She wants— _needs_ to see them as evil. She won’t allow herself to start thinking of them just as regular foot soldiers, here to do a job and nothing more. Not with what they’ve already done to her, to Shiro and her father, not with what Delphine and Mazlo have told her.

 

 _Isn’t that how it worked, though?_ _In the human evil in your history books? Complacency of the masses?_ a small voice within her whispers, and she shushes it. These aren’t humans, not even close. She must be another kind of rational about this.

 

The second Galra soldier also steps forward slightly, and she watches her silhouette in the reflection of his armor, a slight figure stained in grey and purple surrounded by three larger ones, all with their backs to the wall, watching in fear, apprehension.

 

“You all know how this goes,” the first Galra continues, and she focuses on the sharpness of his teeth. “Everyone up and out.”

 

 

 

❀ ✿ ❀

 

 

 

The first thing Pidge notices is the roaring of the crowd. A thundering, echoing noise that grows only more distinct as they get closer to the arena, walking through the halls that run underneath it in small clusters as the guards keep their blaster pointed at their backs. It’s a sharp difference from the utter quiet of the room they’d been kept in, where every rustle and cough was distinct, which Pidge can only assume is either soundproofed by its walls, or far off enough not to pick up the noise of the arena, and that contrast only heightens the deafening quality of the sounds she’s now hearing.

 

The chanting and cheering is indistinct and muffled, but nonetheless voluminous, punctuated by sharp bursts of something large and powerful slamming into the ground above them, leaving rumblings that travel down to their level and leave the walls vibrating ominously. Delphine spends most of the walk casting anxious looks up every time this happens, her long, pointed ears quivering, as Mazlo scowls and yanks her along by their joined hands, thin fingers interlocked. Pidge tries not to let herself get distracted, multitasking listening above for what it may teach her about the arena and what is to come, while keeping her eyes moving between the guards and their guns. She needs to learn their patterns, try and spot an opportunity, an opening, to grab Shiro and _run_ , and becomes increasingly frustrated when no such chance appears. The guards are more lax, one leading their group while the other follows from the back, shouting idle conversation about the fights into their comms, but the sentries make up what they lack, moving along the middle of their group with a gun or a metaphorical eye on every cluster at each moment. Even if Pidge felt she could knock down one guard long enough to escape, or slip away while they are distracted, she has no doubt a sentry would take notice. Take aim. Fire.

 

She doesn’t want to die, doesn’t _plan_ to die. Whether it’s in the arena or by gunfire makes no difference to the end result. No unnecessary risks.

 

One of the sentries turns its blank head towards her, and she shivers, shaking off its gaze and moving along, one hand on Delphine’s back to keep nudging her along with Mazlo and the other on Shiro’s sleeve to make sure he doesn’t disappear on her. It’s an irrational fear, but she won’t be alone again in enemy territory. Can’t.

 

By the time they reach the last passage to the arena, a sloped ramp and a sliver of light from which the screaming of the crowd booms, promising the final territory, Delphine is actively shaking, two of the hands not in Mazlo’s grip tugging nervously at several of the six thin braids the longer chunks of her hair are haphazardly gathered in, while the third remains fisted in the hem of the loose purple shirt each of them had been given to wear over the thin black bodysuits that were apparently standard gladiatorial garments for slaves.

 

“Oh no,” Delphine whispers, high and thin. “Oh no, oh no, oh no.”

 

Pidge spares a quick glance at the leading guard, now speaking to another stationed near the mouth of the tunnel as they all come to a stop, and leans forward, breathing quietly near the edge of Delphine’s ear, “What’s wrong?” There’s a loud boom from above them, accompanied by another sharp round of cheers from the crowd and a flinch from Delphine, and Pidge endeavors to block it out lest she do the same, forcing herself to count the white speckles along the end of Delphine’s ear. Numbers are good. Numbers are safe, familiar. She can’t allow herself to become overwhelmed by her surroundings, not right now.

 

“It’s Myzax,” Delphine says, one part awe and three parts terror.

 

“Who?” Shiro’s voice comes from above Pidge, and she glances over to see him leaning over her shoulder, speaking into Delphine’s other ear, his eyes trained on the guards just as cautiously as Pidge’s own were.

 

“The champion,” Delphine says. “An enormous creature that wields a magic club. He’s never been beaten.”

 

Pidge tilts her head, narrows her eyes. “How do you know?” From in front of Delphine, Mazlo turns, scowling at her.

 

“Our ears are better than yours,” Delphine murmurs, flicking one ear to bat the edge of Pidge’s nose as if in evidence. “I hear everything that’s going on up there, and by now I know what the hum of Myzax’s club sounds like.”

 

“Hum?” Shiro asks, just as the guards finish whatever they were discussing and turn to them all, and Delphine falls silent. There’s a glint, and Pidge notices for the first time the large, wickedly curved blade in the waiting guard’s hands. The guards survey the lot of them, and then one speaks quietly to the other, the words lost to Pidge against all the noise. She only hears Delphine’s gasp and Mazlo’s muttered swear as the guard finishes whatever he was saying, one of Delphine’s hands shooting down to grab Pidge’s own.

 

“ _No_.”

 

“What is it?” Pidge asks, too rattled by the utter hopelessness in Delphine’s voice to even be irritated about the sudden physical contact.

 

“He said…“ Delphine trails off, just as the guard with the blade steps forward, holding it out to the group of them, pointed right at Pidge, and she feels her stomach drop. “…He said let’s start with someone new. Someone small to warm things up.”

 

Oh.

 

The roaring of the crowd suddenly seems to vanish, fading to a distant echo, as Pidge stares down the handle of the waiting blade. She can still feel Delphine’s hand in her own, the tickle of her hair against the sides of her face, the sweat running down her jawline, but it’s all secondary and removed. She’s not in the pilot’s seat of her body anymore, everything on automatic as she watches the glint of the blade, her entire mind frozen on it.

 

Somewhere, there’s the change of noise in the crowd—the end of a fight? The call for a new one? And the guard steps forward again impatiently, the other leveling his blaster.

 

Delphine gives a high sob, breaking through the white noise—why does she care so much? Why does it matter to her if Pidge lives or dies?—and time speeds up around her once more.

 

Ah. Right.

 

Pidge levels one last look at the blade, and the humming blaster, takes a deep breath, and yanks her shirt over her head.

 

“Wha—Pidge!” Shiro hisses. “What are you doing?”

 

“This thing is functionally useless,” she says, her voice the bland monotone she’d use to describe a machine so outdated there’s no hope of salvaging it. “It doesn’t cover or protect anything that the bodysuit doesn’t. It only makes us easier to grab.” Pidge glances quickly at the guards, who only look confused, and proceeds to grab the shirt in both her hands and pull, finding the give of the fabric easy as she rips it into two strips. She used to help her mother tear up scrap fabric to use as stuffing for Bebe’s dog bed, when it was getting lumpy but not so worn it was worth replacing. She knows how to do it evenly enough.

 

“Pidge?!” Shiro sounds one part scandalized, one part even more lost, as she grabs the larger strip and tears that in two as well, the ends fluttering as they come apart.

 

“Better to make use of it,” she mutters, placing two strips in her mouth and biting down on them to free up her hands, as she takes up the third and ties it into a rough loop, before scooping up her hair and piling it on top of her head, tying it back sloppily with the loop of fabric. A few whisps drift loose from the messy ponytail, and she studies them, watching overgrown brown roots and faded-out blue dye that follows the long length of each strand, before raking her fingers through her bangs and pushing them back to the best of her ability. Not much she can do for them, they’re not long enough to tie back, and a headband would just create something easy to pull down and strangle her with.

 

“My hair always gets in my face. I’ll need to be able to see,” she says as she takes the other two strips from her mouth, winding one each around her palms and wrists, the one thing left uncovered by the bodysuit. She’s a builder, a creator. She needs her hands intact, not cut up and torn by handling that weapon or skidding along the ground.

 

Once she’s done, she drops her hands, looks to the blade, breathes in, out.

 

She thinks she should be screaming, should be kicking and fighting every inch to the blade, to whatever is beyond that glimpse of light up the ramp and into the arena. She isn’t. She has to conserve her energy, wasting it now would be pointless.

 

“You have a self-awareness,” her father had told her once, when she was little, with red scrapes on her knees and a sticky ice cream cone between her fingers. A bird with a broken wing she had rescued from the back garden had just died the day before, buried two feet under in a shoebox. Matt had been crying as they lowered it into the ground, she hadn’t. “To some people, it’s going to look like foolhardiness. To others, it’s going to look like you don’t feel anything. But we both know better than that.” He’d placed a hand on her head, ruffling her hair and sending her bangs tangling in front of her eyes. “You’re just different. You feel so much, kid, more than most people ever will, you just know more as well. You know when your emotions are useful, and when they aren’t. You know how to be brave, even when you’re afraid.”

 

It isn’t that she’s not scared.

 

It’s that she is.

 

The blade glints, and she takes a step forward.

 

“Stop!” It’s a hoarse cry, and then there’s arms looped around her from behind, a head buried on her shoulder.

 

“Shiro,” Pidge mumbles, thrown off balance. She brings a hand up carefully, touching his arm. “You need to let go.”

 

“No…” Shiro says, hollow and defeated, his head lifts up, and she watches him study the guards carefully, dark eyes looking for some answer they both know isn’t there, if she hasn’t already found it. “No.” There’s suddenly icy conviction in his voice, and his arms tighten around her briefly, fingers flexing. “Pidge, I’m about to do something really stupid.”

 

And then he lets go of her, shoving her back forcefully in a move that sends her stumbling, unable to follow as he jumps forward. Delphine yelps, and grabs Pidge around the waist, keeping her from falling, but she barely notices, eyes stuck on Shiro as he wrestles the blade from the guard’s grip, the second backing away and keeping his blaster aimed at Shiro as if unsure what to do. Finally, Shiro pulls the blade free, shoving the guard away, and turns back to Pidge and the others, expression dark.

 

“Pidge, look out!” Delphine shrieks, letting go of her and diving for cover, and it’s all the warning she gets before Shiro is there in front of her, swinging the blade down in a sweeping arc aimed at her legs. Moving on instinct, she throws herself out of the way, hitting the ground and tumbling roughly, but thankfully missing the edge of Shiro’s blade. She rolls to a stop, glad she’d thought to bandage her palms as she pushes herself up as quickly as she can manage and jumps to her feet. Across from her, Shiro watches her, fingers twitching along the blade’s handle and something pained and unreadable on his face.

 

“Dude,” she says with all the feeling she can muster, “what the _fuck_?”

 

“Hold still,” Shiro says, and sweeps forward again, blade swinging wildly.

 

“How about no?!” Pidge yells, dodging out of the way. From the corner of her eye she can see Delphine held back by Mazlo from intervening, all six eyes wide, and the guards on the other side, their mouths gaping.

 

They are not, Pidge decides as she dodges another sweep of the blade, very good at their job at all.

 

“Dammit, Pidge!” Shiro snarls, following her movements, and on his next swing down she takes a risk, diving forward rather than back, and grabs his forearm, locking her elbows and straining to keep it well above her head. She can feel his pulse under her fingers, rabbit-fast, and when she meets his eyes there’s fear there, and a kind of self-loathing she can’t make sense of. His arm shudders against all her strength, trying to wrench itself free instead of push past and down and deliver the blade to her back, rather than the arcs he’s cut at her arms and legs. So he’s not trying to kill her, then. “I’m trying to get you out of here!”

 

“What?!” she says as Shiro tries to yank his arm free again, and she digs her fingers in stubbornly, refusing to give him an inch.

 

“You need to find your dad!” Shiro says, staring imploringly at her, and then it slides into place. Prisoners with long-term injuries are sent to the work camps. He’s literally taking the decision to fight or die out of her hands before it even becomes a fully realized choice.

 

He’s not afraid for himself, he’s afraid for _her_.

 

“You asshole!” she screeches, digging her nails into his bodysuit as if she can claw some sense into him. “You don’t get to make that choice for me!”

 

Shiro hesitates, and there’s a shift of noise behind them, the guards approaching from behind Shiro’s shoulder. “Shiro!” she says, and he twists, wrenching his arm from her grip and swinging the blade at the guards, forcing them back.

 

“Fuck off!” He turns back to her, blade loose in his hand. “You have too much to go home to. Your parents need you; _Matt_ needs you. I can’t let you die in here, Pidge. I can’t watch that. Don’t make me watch you—“ He chokes off, faltering. “Don’t make me watch my best friend die.”

 

“So what, you’re going to sacrifice yourself?!” Pidge throws her hands up, suddenly and irrationally furious. So much for not letting her emotions get the better of her. “I can’t watch you die either, you dick! You’re my best friend, too!”

 

From somewhere to their left, there’s a nervous whimper, Pidge thinks it might be Delphine, and something in Shiro’s eyes hardens. “This isn’t a debate,” he says firmly, and then re-grips the weapon, swinging down at her. Pidge dives forward as he does, tackling him, and caught off guard, Shiro falls, sending both of them to the ground. Shiro grunts, instantly going to sit up, and Pidge fists her hands together, bringing them down onto his stomach with as much strength as she can. With a wheeze, Shiro falls back, winded, and Pidge scrambles, putting a knee on his arm as she forcefully yanks the blade out of his hand, and fumbles with it, the grip too large for her, before pointing it at him.

 

“Shiro, honey, you sweet, stupid idiot,” she pants, glaring at him as Shiro stares up at her dazedly. “ _Everything_ with me is a debate. Now how about _you_ go and find my fucking father?” She positions the blade over his shoulder, taking a deep breath and going to shove it down with all her might, knowing she’ll need to make sure the wound lasts if she wants to get Shiro out of here and sent to a labor camp, before something grabs her from behind, and yanks her up and off Shiro.

 

“Hey!” she says as whatever it is holds her aloft, kicking out and swinging the blade to the best of her ability. Her free hand goes to the arms holding her, and scratches, her blunt fingernails dragging sharply along metal—a sentry, then. Shiro coughs, sitting up slowly and staring at her with wide eyes.

 

“Enough of this shit,” she hears one of the guards mutter, as another two sentries appear and grab Shiro’s arms. “Just throw them into the ring together. If they don’t kill each other first the Champion will make neat work of them.”

 

“What?” Shiro stumbles up as the two sentries holding his arms drag him forward, and the one holding Pidge follows behind, ignoring her continued screeching. “No, wait—“

 

The gate at the top of the ramp opens, the lights of the arena blinding Pidge as they reach it, and she only hears Shiro shout as he is shoved forward, before she is thrown unceremoniously from the sentry’s grip and into the arena. She gasps as she hits the ground, rough gravel catching on her exposed skin and getting caught in her hair, and the blade tumbles out of her grip as she rolls to a stop. All around her, the noise of the audience roars, deafening her eardrums and making her head ache. The skin of her face where it hit the ground feels raw, likely scratched if not already bleeding.

 

Slowly, she finds herself, and pushes herself up onto her hands and knees, looking up to spot Shiro mere feet from her, lying on his side and groaning, somehow still audible over the sounds of the crowd. Or perhaps she’s just imagining it.

 

“Shiro,” she croaks, crawling toward him.

 

“Pidge,” he says quietly when she reaches him and places a hand on his shoulder, and he pushes himself up carefully, still half sprawled on the ground but looking around warily. “Where’s—“

 

A roar from their right cuts Shiro off, and they both turn as one, looking to a giant, ogre-like alien standing on the other side of the arena floor, a wide club with an ominously glowing purple light at its top held in his hand.

 

“Oh shit,” Shiro mumbles, before Myzax swings his club, and the purple light comes free, making an arc straight for them.

 

Pidge says the only thing she can as she stumbles to her feet, yanking Shiro with her.

 

“ _Run_.”

 

 

 

❀ ✿ ❀

 

 

 

Pidge is sixteen when she meets Shiro.

 

 _Really_ meets him, at least. She’s already been at the Garrison for the better part of a year and a half—busting through every expectation and pushing the limits of the Garrison’s age exception policies. Officially, they take sixteen to eighteen year olds, maybe the occasional fifteen-year-old, if they’re exceptional.

 

They don’t take almost anyone at fourteen. Luckily for Pidge, though, she’s never been very good at being just anyone.

 

So, by sixteen, she’s already in the advanced classes and training sessions, and used to rolling up her sleeves and ignoring eighteen and nineteen year olds who don’t want to deal with someone younger than them. It’s probable she and Shiro have shared classes, before they actually meet, but they’d never managed to take notice of each other, Shiro too caught up in trying to be the best and Pidge in trying to prove everyone wrong.

 

…Really, looking back on it, they’ve always had more in common than one would first think.

 

They speak for the first time approximately two hours and fourteen minutes after Pidge’s first boyfriend dumps her—a fact that leaves her too angry and generally just too miserable to sleep, and she bitterly decides to remedy it by breaking into the advanced students’ workshop, toolkit in one hand and six-pack of Diet Coke in the other.

 

She’s two cokes in, and deep in the guts of one of the school’s old interplanetary rovers, when someone else decides this is the night to sneak into the workshop. She doesn’t even notice at first, focus on her work and the music blasting in her headphones drowning out most background noise, until the person trips over something in the dark, cursing loudly. It’s enough for even her to hear over her music, and she frowns, pushing her headphones down with one hand and the other rescuing her penlight from where she’d had it clenched between her teeth, using it as her source of light as she’d dug around in the bot.

 

Pidge levels it accusingly in the direction of the noise, and it illuminates a boy—maybe three or four years older than her, if she had to guess—frozen sheepishly on the middle of the workshop floor, one foot still half trapped in the tire he must have tripped over.

 

“Who’re you?” she asks, deciding an air of superiority, of confidence that suggests she is supposed to be here, is best.

 

“I’m Shiro…” The guy trails off, blinking wildly. “…Who are you?”

 

Pidge squints, considering. “I’m Pidge. Lights,” she calls out loudly, and overhead the bright ceiling lights flicker on.

 

He… _Shiro_ gapes, looking up in astonishment. “How’d you do that?”

 

“I’m magic,” she says dryly, turning back to her bot. She’d actually overridden the school’s voice activation system months ago, giving herself the same privileges a professor has—namely among those, light activation—but nobody else needs to know that.

 

She pointedly keeps her eyes on her work, hoping this Shiro guy will just go and do whatever it is he’s here to do and leave her alone, but instead he shifts closer, studying her warily. “…What’re you doing here?”

 

“I could ask you the same thing,” Pidge points out irritably, looking back up, and when Shiro shifts nervously, she rolls her eyes. “What does it look like I’m doing? Working.”

 

“Oh.” He takes another half step, peering down at her work curiously. “Is that one of the old Mars rovers?”

 

She sighs. “No. Venus.” He hums in acknowledgement, and Pidge reluctantly puts down her wrench. “No, okay, seriously—what are _you_ doing here? You’re not an engineering student.”

 

Pidge may not know their names—doesn’t necessarily care to, and she’s historically terrible with names, regardless—but she can at least recognize the vast majority of the upper-class engineering students by now. And no way a first year engineering student would break in like this, not unless they have a death wish. Shiro is definitely just this side of too old to even be a late enrollee first year, anyways.

 

Shiro winces, looking all kinds of guilty, and Pidge honestly can’t believe a guy like this is prancing about the workshop in the middle of the night. How the hell would he ever finagle his way out of trouble, with a face like that?

 

Maybe he just puppy dog’s his way out of it, complete with the classic big, apologetic eyes, she thinks, and half-succeeds in suppressing a snort at that.

 

Shiro gives her a weird look as she does, but then shakes his head, as if to clear his thoughts. “No, I’m uh—“ He rubs at the back of his head, very self-consciously. Not just the puppy dog, Pidge decides, he’s got the ‘goody-two-shoes boy scout’ thing going on in _spades_. “…I’m…technically a piloting student?” he mumbles, and Pidge raises an eyebrow.

 

“Why’s a pilot in _here?_ ”

 

He jerks a thumb over his shoulder to a lumpy shape in the back left corner, covered by a fading red-grey tarp. “I know some people, who know some people, and…well I kind of hid my hoverbike in here and everyone’s just pretending not to notice it?” He blinks, and then looks back down in Pidge. “Why are you—I mean, you’re not an engineering student either, right? At least, I’m pretty sure you’re not.”

 

Pidge weighs up the costs of being honest, before deciding it doesn’t really matter in this case. It’s not like Shiro can report her without getting himself in trouble. She yawns, lacing her fingers together and stretching her arms over her head. God, how late even is it?

 

“No. Not yet, anyways. I’m a communications student—second year. I’m trying to get permission to double-dip into the fields a bit and have both communications and engineering concentrations, though.”

 

“…Wow,” Shiro says, awkward and looking even more out of his depth than before. “Do people even do that?”

 

She grins sharply. “I’d be the first.”

 

Shiro just nods, and Pidge figures he’s the kind of person that never felt the need to start hopping fields. A good student, probably, well educated in the basics of all subjects, as one should be, but at the end of the day he’d found what he was good at and stuck with it. Like most people do.

 

Pidge can respect that. She just also wants to be good at _everything_. Get her fingers under every jet hood and every circuit board and every piece of radio equipment until she can take it apart and put it back together ten times over. Until she knows how it works.

 

All of it.

 

She doesn’t think the half-finished files that demand answers to every question she’s ever dreamed will be quiet, otherwise.

 

“Look,” she says, when it’s clear Shiro’s not going to say anything else. “Neither of us is supposed to be here, and it’s clear we’ve both got stuff we came here to do. So why don’t we just…do that, and leave it at that. Maybe give each other a warning if anyone _else_ comes in, but otherwise it’s not like we need to stand here awkwardly trying to have a conversation.”

 

“I wasn’t—I—“ Shiro hangs his head, and she can swear he breathes a sigh of relief. “Yeah, okay.” He trails over morosely to his hoverbike, dragging off well-worn tarp, and Pidge, figuring that’s the end of it, goes back to her own work.

 

At first, she shoves her headphones back up, loses herself in crap music she’s pirated from some dusty corner of the internet, but eventually it feels weird, knowing someone else is in the room with her, and she pushes them down, works in silence aside from the occasional noise of tools clinking on Shiro’s side of the workshop.

 

It’s almost peaceful, kind of nice having company, in a weird way.

 

Almost—at least until Shiro, apparently not content to leave well enough alone, calls out across the room when she yawns loudly, again. “Hey, uh…are you okay?”

 

She blinks. Glancing up at him and then back down at her bot, trying to refocus. “Um. Yeah? Just tired.”

 

“Well it just—“ Shiro sounds entirely uncomfortable, yet can’t seem to keep from running his mouth. “It…looked like you’d been crying, earlier.”

 

“Oh.” Shiro, Pidge decides, has not yet grown into half the social charisma needed for his good boy charm—or at least not the concept of timing. Setting down her wrench once more, she mentally decides to hell with it, and announces, without preamble. “My boyfriend dumped me.”

 

“Oh shi—“ She hears more than sees Shiro shoot up, colliding with the opened flap of the hood of his hoverbike, and crashing back down with a creative litany of swears.

 

“…You okay?” Pidge echoes from Shiro’s own earlier words, feeling just this side of awkward herself now.

 

“Fine.” Shiro straightens back up with a groan. “Sorry.”

 

“For your reaction or the question?”

 

“…Both?”

 

She fights the urge to laugh. “Okay, well, it definitely hurt you more than it hurt me. And he was a jerk, anyways.”

 

Shiro sighs in relief. “Okay. Okay. Good.” He glances down at the screwdriver in his hands, fidgeting awkwardly, before looking back up and announcing. “This conversation is going terribly.”

 

Pidge huffs, blowing her bangs out of her eyes and leaning over the top of her rover, arms braced. “Yeah, I’ve had better.” At his miserable expression, she shrugs. “But I’ve had worse, too, honestly.”

 

“Thank Christ.” Shiro slumps, burying his face in his hands for a long moment, before straightening back up. “Okay, starting over. Hi. I’m Shiro. I’m a third year flight student and I don’t know how to make friends, apparently. I uh—your rover is cool, and I like your hair?” he finishes weakly, waving to the bright blue hair she had dyed just this past weekend when back home, an interesting experiment Matt had attempted to assist with, and Pidge snorts.

 

“My ex didn’t. Like the hair, I mean.”

 

“Oh god,” Shiro says, looking more embarrassed than before, and this time Pidge _does_ laugh. “That was a joke, right? Please tell me it was a joke.”

 

“Yes,” she says, and Shiro looks almost painfully relieved. “I think it had more to do with—“ She frowns. “How’d he put it? I’m self-absorbed and my obsession with my work is narcissistic and boring.”

 

Shiro hisses in a breath between his teeth, just looking sympathetic now. “Yikes.”

 

“So yeah,” Pidge says, picking back up her wrench and twirling it between her fingers absentmindedly. “His loss, and all that junk.”

 

“Well,” Shiro announces, already looking like he’s regretting opening his mouth but seemingly unable to stop. “If it helps—and it…probably doesn’t, given I’m practically a stranger, and…holy shit I should really stop talking.” He pauses, breathing in and out slowly. “I don’t think you’re…that?”

 

Pidge raises an eyebrow. “A self-absorbed narcissist?”

 

Shiro winces. “Yeah—or, no. Or…you know what I mean.”

 

“Yeah,” Pidge says, mostly to reassure him. Though, when she turns back to her work, she does find she feels just a little bit better. “…Thanks.”

 

Shiro brightens up. “You’re welcome.”

 

He goes back to his own work in silence, and for a long while it’s just that—the two of them working on opposite sides of a large room in otherwise complete silence, the kind of thing that would normally grate on Pidge to the extreme, but she finds she doesn’t mind, for once. Somehow.

 

Maybe Shiro’s different. Maybe she’s just lonely, given the circumstances. There’s no concrete hypothesis to the matter, yet.

 

“So, hey,” Shiro says eventually, sounding just slightly more at ease. “How’d you get a name like Pidge, anyways?”

 

Pidge sighs. “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you next time.”

 

It’s not until it’s out of her mouth that she realizes she does mean it. Next time.

 

“Next time,” Shiro echoes both her words and her thoughts cheerfully, and Pidge wonders what the hell just happened. “Works for me.”

 

Pidge says nothing, ducking back behind her rover’s open panel and half torn apart circuits while she tries to puzzle out this much more pressing mental problem.

 

…Next time, huh?

 

All right then. Why not?

 

Not like she’s got much better to do, at least.

 

 

 

❀ ✿ ❀

 

 

 

“I hope you know I absolutely hate you for this!” Pidge screams in Shiro’s vague direction from the pillar she’s hiding behind, one of a good dozen and then some scattered throughout the arena, as another one of Myzax’s shots fires overhead, scraping the edge of the pillar she’s under and leaving it rumbling threateningly.

 

“ _Me?!_ ” Shiro’s head pokes out from the nearest pillar, glaring at her. “How is this _my_ fault?”

 

“Your little sword-stealing fit was what got us chucked in here!” she yells back, hissing and crouching when there’s the ominous hum of another shot priming to fire.

 

“I was trying to help you!” Shiro’s shriek is beyond outraged. “If it weren’t for me you’d be in here on your own!”

 

“Well at least then I’d be able to move freely without having to worry about your sorry— _DUCK!_ ” This last word she shouts as the ball of purple light from Myzax’s club hits the pillar Shiro’s behind, cleaving it right through the middle and sending it toppling towards the ground in two looming pieces. Shiro swears loudly and dives out of the way just before it hits the ground—and subsequently hits him—rolling along the ground in a move that looks far too tidy for a man Pidge knows for a fact hasn’t set foot in a gymnasium since he was ten. He jumps up from the roll at the same pillar as her, wobbling on his feet unsteadily for a moment before Pidge grabs him by his stupid purple shirt and yanks him more securely behind it, just in time to narrowly miss another one of Myzax’s shots.

 

“This is bad,” Shiro says bluntly once he’s steady, the two of them tucked up against the base of the pillar, shoulder to shoulder. “It only takes a few of those energy balls to take out one of these pillars. We’re going to run out of places to hide eventually.”

 

“Yeah, no shit, Sherlock,” Pidge says with a snort. The five scattered, destroyed pillars lying in a neat line in their wake make all that clear enough, in her mind. Quickly, she pokes her head around the edge of the pillar, catching a glimpse of Myzax lying in wait, his club humming dangerously as it powers up. “At least he’s happy enough to mostly just stand there and throw those things at us. If he kept continuously charging at us instead, we’d already be dead.” He’d only charged them the once, near the beginning of the fight, if it could even be called that at this point, but it was more than enough to justify her fears as to what would happen if he continued to do so.

 

Thank God he’d stopped, seemingly content to only pace menacingly and fling whatever energy was held at the top of his club at them—or rather, the pillars they were behind—to the wild cheers of the audience. He’s baiting them, Pidge realizes, as he hunts her and Shiro out like rats. Destroying every place they might hide behind in order to drag things out for the sake of the audience.

 

It wouldn’t be much fun if he killed them outright, after all—this isn’t an execution, it’s a performance. A show made out of their deaths.

 

“There are intermittent pauses between his throws,” she mutters, fingers drumming anxiously on the pillar. “There must be a recharge system of some kind, with that much energy being expelled. Once we know the pattern, we’ll be in better shape.”

 

“Pidge!” Shiro hisses, yanking her squarely behind the pillar again as another shot slams into it. That’s two glancing shots and one direct hit. One more and they’ll have to move.

 

The sound of the humming changes in its volume after the shot hits the pillar, sputtering out and then picking up again, growing in frequency, and she focuses her attention on it, counting under her breath. The last three shots had been fairly uniform, as best she can guess, but the pause is longer here. The hum reaches its crescendo as another orb is launched, and Shiro grabs her hand as it slams into the pillar, sending it crumbling down behind them as he yanks her over to the next one.

 

“Every third shot,” she gasps once they reach the pillar, bracing herself against the worn stone, and Shiro’s wildly darting, calculating eyes fall to her, blinking in confusion.

 

“What?”

 

“I was right, it recharges,” she says sharply, “following three shots. Normally the time between shots is roughly twenty seconds, give or take, as it returns to the base of the club, but after every third one, there’s a pause. Forty—no, forty-five seconds before the next hit.”

 

“Great,” Shiro shoots his own quick look at Myzax around the pillar, ducking back around as another shot rumbles overhead. “How does that help us exactly?”

 

“It’s our time window,” Pidge says. “We need to get our sword back.”

 

Shiro glances at her dubiously, before casting a pointed look in the direction they’d left the sword, still lying in the dirt where they’d originally been thrown into the arena, forgotten in their initial haste to get away from Myzax. “And how do we do that?”

 

“Simple, we use the recharge time.” She pulls Shiro down as the orb slams into their pillar directly, leaving it shuddering against their backs. “That’s three!” she says into his ear, straining to be heard over the whine of the orb as it retreats once more. They can’t afford to fuck this up. “I’ll keep his focus, you get the sword!”

 

“Wait, Pidge—“ Shiro shouts, but she’s already gone, ducking out from under him and around the edge of the pillar, running into plain view as she ignores Shiro’s panicked cursing from where she left him.

 

“Hey, fuckface!” she screeches as loudly as she can, hands balled into fists at her sides. Myzax’s head turns towards her, regarding the tiny creature standing before him. From the corner of her eye she can see Shiro dart out from behind the pillar, moving carefully between the ruined ones before he’s sure Myzax’s attention is diverted, and then breaking into a sprint towards the sword, and she grins sharply. “Yeah, over here, you big, ugly, pig-faced son of a bitch!”

 

Almost hysterically, a part of her suddenly hopes Mazlo is watching. Maybe the idiot can learn something about how to properly cuss someone out.

 

For a second, she’s not even sure Myzax heard her, but then his face contorts, and he roars, swinging up his club up above his head menacingly. Whatever her words had translated over as must have gotten her point across, then.

 

She stands her ground, still counting down in the back of her mind the seconds until the orb fully recharges, and keeps her peripheral view on Shiro as he nears his target, before Myzax roars again, a loud, deep sound that steals her attention, and charges toward her.

 

For a moment, her eyes are glued to the orb, transfixed by the purple light waving wildly with Myzax’s club as he closes down the distance, and she cannot move. Her heart hammers in her chest, but she stays frozen, staring down something deadly, yet gorgeous, an advent of technology she cannot hope to yet understand.

 

 _Deer in the headlights,_ she thinks blearily, and then she can hear her father’s voice, saying the words with the right name this time: _don’t look, Katie. Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look._ She closes her eyes, and even with the rumbling of the ground under her feet, the screaming of the crowd above her, she can still hear Matt’s little hiccups as he’d cried into her shoulder, can see his little frown and those tear-stricken, red-stained cheeks as he’d been thrown awake in sharp relief against her eyelids.

 

…What was it Shiro had said to her?

 

_“You have too much to go home to.”_

“Matt,” she whispers.

 

The rumbling of Myzax’s footsteps closes in, and the humming of the orb grows louder. Her forty-five seconds are up.

 

“ _Pidge!_ ” she can hear Shiro’s shout, loud and frightened, from across the arena.

 

Pidge opens her eyes.

 

“Come on, then!” she screams, and charges towards Myzax.

 

She doesn’t look at Myzax’s face, keeps her focus on his legs as she races towards them, but she can see the slightest faltering in his steps, the smallest indication of his not expecting her advance on him, before his pace resumes, thundering across the arena floor. The hum of the orb reaches its loudest point as she watches it fly from his club in the corner of her eye, and she puts all her energy into a few wide, leaping paces forward, before diving to miss the blast as it slams into the ground just behind her, sending scattered rubble flying into the air. She can feel the debris catch in her hair and hit the back of her neck as she rolls forward messily to her feet again, continuing her track towards Myzax.

 

Ha, take that, Shiro. Even she can do a damn forward roll when the times call desperately enough for it.

 

And hey, she thinks wildly, she was never an athlete, but she’s always been able to run. Has been running her whole life, every time she was too weak, too small to meet the return swing. Pidge may not be a brawler, probably never will be, but she’s goddamn _fast_ when she needs to be.

 

Faster then people would expect.

 

Pidge reaches Myzax—or he reaches her, two very different forces colliding—and as he aims a swing of his club at her, the orb humming as it returns to its base, she ducks low, shooting forward and sliding between his legs. Hopping up, she hears Myzax stumble behind her, struggling to turn around so quickly, and she grins as she continues running. Like a bull in a china shop—he’s fast, but his size keeps him from changing directions as quickly. The orb hums behind her, taking its second shot, and she veers left sharply, hearing it slam into the ground where she turned.

 

She’d predicted correctly, then. The orb is a long-range weapon, he can’t aim as well with it, can’t direct its path as smoothly, when his target is just below him. He’s weaker here with her at his feet than he is when she’s behind the safety of the pillars.

 

“Pidge!” She hears Shiro yell again, and glances over at the direction of his voice to see him sprinting towards her, the blade in his left hand, its strange grip hugging his forearm.

 

“Only one more shot!” she shouts. “Pillar!” Grimly nodding but not slowing his pace, Shiro’s longer strides bring him up even with her, and together they race for the closest pillar, diving behind it as Myzax looses his third shot. The orb slams into the pillar directly, leaving it rattling, and from where they crouch in the dirt Pidge reaches up and grabs Shiro by the back of his neck, pulling him down until his forehead knocks against hers, sweat-dripped bangs intermingling. “We’ve got to cut him down, first. We’ll never get high enough to take him out, otherwise.”

 

“You mean kill—“ Shiro cuts himself off, something conflicted passing over his face, before he nods grimly. It’s them or Myzax, they both understand that. “He’s bipedal. A decent cut to the back of his kneecaps should do the trick. Do we wait for after the next recharge?”

 

Pidge grimaces. “I don’t think we—“ On the other side of the pillar, Myzax roars, and then there comes the telltale sound of his steps coming in their direction. “—we don’t have time!” she shouts. “I kind of pissed him off!”

 

Shiro’s face is pale underneath the scrapes and small cuts oozing blood that mar his skin, but he nods again regardless. “Right,” he says tonelessly, and then they both turn, jumping up and sprinting out and away from the pillar on opposite sides as Myzax plows through it, staggering as it crashes down around him.

 

Pidge makes it nine steps away before she falls, hitting the ground with a pained grunt, and as she pushes herself up she glances back, looking for what tripped her up. She finds a long chain made up of small, thick loops resting next to her foot, presumably left behind from some former gladiator, and she stares at it for a moment, hesitating, before she hears Myzax roar again, and, not stopping to think, grabs it in both hands before she jumps up and continues running, praying Myzax’s ire with her is still a guarantee of his chasing after.

 

Mere seconds later, she hears his gait thundering after her, a confirmation of what she’d hoped.

 

 _That’s right,_ she thinks as she pivots quickly, heading back towards Myzax, _keep your attention on me._

Myzax bellows angrily as she reaches him, the arm not holding his club sweeping low in front of him, hand outstretched to grab her, clearly having learned something from their last encounter. She screeches back, fierce and raw, and drops one end of the chain, gripping the other in both her hands and swinging it towards him wildly. She’s almost afraid she won’t have the strength, but the chain follows the arc of her arms, slamming into Myzax’s elbow, and it’s enough to startle him as she veers away from his outreaching hand and staggering feet. Behind Myzax, she can see Shiro appear, dark bangs hanging in his eyes and mouth a thin, determined line as he swings his arm holding the sword at the back of Myzax’s knees, slicing through in a deep cut that leaves blood clinging to the blade and flying in scattered drops onto the arena floor.

 

There’s a loud, surprised cry, and then Myzax stumbles, his legs buckling and knees slamming into the ground. Instantly, Pidge darts forward, moving on instinct as she races behind him. “Base of the skull, Shiro!” she yells as loudly as she can manage, twisting and swinging the chain at Myzax’s neck. The loose end flies over, falling around to the far end of the back of his neck, and Pidge leaps forward, grabbing it and bringing the two ends of the chain together in her hands, yanking down with all her might.

 

Myzax wobbles, head tilting backward, caught off guard, before he wheezes, and pushes back, straining against the chain. Pidge yelps, redoubling her grip and pulling with every ounce of strength she can muster. It’s a wavering give-and-take, and for a long second she’s afraid it won’t be enough, before Shiro is suddenly _there_ , face contorted in a snarl and teeth bared as his spare hand grabs the chain, the metal cutting into his bare fingers. Together, they drag Myzax’s head down towards them as Shiro’s other arm shoots up, using the force of their pull to bury the blade in the back of Myzax’s neck, driving it up and underneath his skull.

 

There’s a great shudder, and then Myzax falls in a great slump onto his side, going still.

 

For a long moment there’s silence, and then the crowd erupts into screaming cheers, lights flashing from above as they focus in on Pidge and Shiro.

 

She looks to him, hands on her knees and panting as she tries to find her breath once more, and Shiro stares back, eyes wide and half-unseeing. “You good?” he asks, and she almost wants to burst into screeching laughter from the sheer absurdity of it all.

 

“Good,” she says, and slowly, together they stand back up, looking up to the faceless mass of the crowd. Shiro moves first, as if a puppet on strings, and she follows, crossing the distance to Myzax’s body. Grabbing the sword in both hands, Shiro yanks it out of Myzax’s head, stumbling back and staring distastefully at the dark green blood dripping from it. Almost numbly, Pidge crouches down in turn, scooping up one end of her chain and dragging it out from under Myzax’s neck.

 

Suddenly, there’s a hush from the crowd as a lone figure in a gleaming, intricately decorated podium amongst the greatest heights of the arena stands. With the distance, Pidge can’t see many details, but she can pick out the shine of armor, and the glimpse of a cape behind the figure, and that, along with their position, is enough.

 

 _“Zarkon,”_ she remembers Shiro telling her. _“That’s what they call him. Their Emperor.”_

Pidge stares up at him, at Zarkon, and then, moving on instinct, she grabs Shiro’s spare hand in her own, and thrusts them both up into the air.

 

The cheering of the crowd is deafening.

 

She never takes her eyes off Zarkon’s box, and while she still can’t tell, she pretends his eyes are on her as she scrunches up her mouth and hurls a glob of spit, speckled with blood, at her feet, pointed right at the Galra Emperor.

 

And then, shaky legs finally giving out, she collapses.


	4. Dahlia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Shiro,” she says, patting loosely at what she thinks might be his cheek, and he snorts. 
> 
> “Yeah, it’s me.” 
> 
> “You’re not dead, then,” she sighs. “Good. Good. And neither am I, apparently.” 
> 
> “No, neither are you.” 
> 
> “Lovely,” she mumbles. “Help me up, then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Dahlia: Dignity, Instability, My gratitude exceeds your care](http://www.languageofflowers.com/flowermeaning.htm)

It comes first as a ringing in her ears, echoing and distant, like surfacing from underwater.

“—ing like this is a bad idea.”

 

“Nonsense, with all the ruckus of earlier—“

 

“Ruckus _these two_ caused—“

 

“—no one’s going to notice you sneaking in here. And if they do, it’s hardly going to be something they pay much attention to.”

 

“Really? You think no one’s going to notice my being here when your little patients are the subjects of the biggest upset the arena has seen in a good year?”

 

“…You’re a good liar. You can spin something about just wanting a look if anyone asks. Everyone’s been trying to sneak peeks, finding excuses to come in here.”

 

“…One day, when you get both of us killed, I’m going to find some way to posthumously make sure it gets back to Kolivan it was all your fault.”

 

“Dull.”

 

“…You really think they’re that special?”

 

“A couple first time gladiators taking down the reigning champion and not even losing a limb doing it? Yes. Creatures like Myzax do not just die, not unless it’s planned ahead of time. And we both know this was not planned. They’ve stolen the attention of all the slaves—“

 

“You’re getting ahead of yourself. They won _one fight_.”

 

“I know a leader when I see one. That one, the big one, he has a…presence. He will change things, inspire hope.”

 

Somewhere above Pidge, there’s a snort, quick and dismissive.

 

“You’re always like this, seeing a savior in every survivor. There’s no legend coming to save us, Ulaz, no powerful allies. Have you not figured that out by now?” A pause. “Besides, I like the little one. I saw real grit out there, and true intelligence. Cleverness.”

 

“…I suppose he’s got spunk to him.”

 

Blearily, Pidge opens her eyes, squinting against the bright lights that instantly assault her. Her visions swims, and she whines, trying to lift her arms to shield her vision and finding her limbs heavy, unmoving. From her side, there’s a rustle, and then a face appears above her, between the lights, streaks of light and dark purple and two yellow eyes peering down, sharp and critical. “Easy, easy.”

 

Recognizing the voice as one of the ones that had been speaking, Pidge blinks, trying to bring his face into focus, unsuccessfully. Behind him, she sees another flash of purple, darker, with the same bright yellow eyes, hovering just behind the first’s shoulder.

 

“Easy,” the first repeats, and she narrows her eyes, remembering his earlier words.

 

“Not a boy…” she slurs, the words tired and quiet, barely escaping her mouth, and the fuzzy outline of the Galra frowns, leaning in closer. At the edges of her vision, Pidge sees the darkness creeping in again.

 

“Pardon?”

 

“’M a fucking girl, you uncultured dick,” she mumbles, and then, relenting, closes her eyes against the swimming colors of her vision.

 

“…Well, Ulaz,” she hears the other voice say, right before sweet unconsciousness reclaims her. “I did tell you that one was smart.”

 

A sigh. “Thank you for your _thoughtful_ words as always, Thace.”

 

 

 

❀ ✿ ❀

 

 

 

When Pidge next opens her eyes, it’s to the view of the by now familiar grey ceiling of the cell she and the others had been kept in for the days before the fight.

 

There’s a sharp, aching pain in her head that she’s aware of the second she wakes up, and she groans, closing her eyes once more and bringing a hand up to press against her forehead tiredly. Her skin is warm, but not overly hot to the touch. Not a fever then, just a headache. Wonderful.

 

“Pidge,” she hears a voice quietly murmur, and she sticks her other hand out in its direction, her fingers brushing up against the ridges and planes of a face she knows all to well.

 

“Shiro,” she says, patting loosely at what she thinks might be his cheek, and he snorts.

 

“Yeah, it’s me.”

 

“You’re not dead, then,” she sighs. “Good. Good. And neither am I, apparently.”

 

“No, neither are you.”

 

“Lovely,” she mumbles. “Help me up, then.” She relinquishes her hand from Shiro’s face, going to push herself up, and as she does so she feels hands on her back, steadying her as she sits up. Slowly, she opens her eyes, and does a cursory sweeping glance of the room, finally settling on Shiro, who offers her a lopsided smile.

 

“Where’d they go?” she asks, and Shiro’s smile falters.

 

“Who?”

 

“Those two Galra—“ she frowns, and then shakes it off. “Never mind. Where’s everyone else, though?” She looks around the conspicuously empty room pointedly, this time picking up just the slightest variations in its appearance—missing marks and scratches she remembers from the old room—and Shiro shrugs.

 

“I think we’re in some kind of solitary confinement. I guess between the fight with Myzax and uh—“ he coughs, “particularly the altercation preceding it, they’re a little worried we might try and kill anyone we’re put in with. Not sure why that thinking isn’t applied toward keeping us in the same cell but…”

 

“We worked together during the fight and didn’t go after each other following it,” Pidge points out bluntly, wincing as she shifts carefully so that she can lean her back against the wall. She’d been expecting bruises after all the tumbles she’d taken during the fight, but damn if it still doesn’t hurt like hell, and from the looks of Shiro, his face all scattered with half-healed cuts and scrapes that travel down his neck as far as her eyes can see, he can’t be in much better shape. “They’ve probably realized we’re not likely to actually kill each other, no matter what dumb shit you pulled beforehand.” She blinks, squinting at him. “Speaking of…”

 

Shiro flinches, looking away and scratching at the back of his neck awkwardly, before crossing his arms, fingers gripping tightly at his biceps. The entire move is defensive, vulnerable, and it makes him look oddly small. “Look, I—“

 

“Save it,” Pidge says, holding up a hand. “I get why you did what you did, Shiro. I may not like it, but I get it. I would have done the same for you—metaphorically speaking, at least. I don’t think my first instinct would have been to try and chop off one of your limbs or something but…” Shiro, somehow, only shrinks in on himself more, and Pidge groans, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Okay, not helping, I know. I’m just—I’m not _mad_.”

 

Hesitantly looking up, Shiro casts a skeptical eye at her. “Really?”

 

Dropping her hand, Pidge glares halfheartedly at him. “No. Frankly, mostly because I don’t have the luxury of time or circumstances that make it an option to _be_ mad.” A confused look crosses over Shiro’s face, and she sighs, holding out her hand to him. “Look, for better or for worse, we’re in this together. We haven’t got anyone else we can rely on here, and even with your little…episode…before, there’s still no one else I’d rather have watch my back. Deal?”

 

The relief on Shiro’s face is palpable when he takes her hand. “Deal.”

 

“But!” Pidge announces once he lets go, crossing her arms firmly, a sign of stubbornness for her where it signals defensiveness for him. “Just to be clear: if you try that shit again, I’ll cut your goddamn dick off.”

 

Shiro winces. “Fair.”

 

“Right,” Nodding her head once, Pidge stands, ignoring the protesting creak of her bones and the pull of all her bruised muscles as they shift, and Shiro follows her, wobbling unsteadily on his feet for a moment. He’s definitely not in much better shape than her. “Glad we’ve got that sorted out.”

 

“…Now what?” Shiro asks after a moment, looking around the empty room and then to her unsurely.

 

“Honestly?” Placing her hands on her hips, Pidge takes her own survey of the room, cataloguing all the same thick, metal walls, and thin marks where the door might be, as their previous cell. “I have no idea.”

 

 

 

❀ ✿ ❀

 

 

 

It takes an eternity for anyone to come for them.

 

By then, Pidge has already worked herself through the many stages of being driven half crazy by pacing, then by sitting, and then by checking every inch and every crack of the room over, even knowing from the moment she starts just by looking alone that the contents to be found won’t be any different from their last cell. When the door finally, _finally_ opens, she’s gone back to pacing, steadily drumming her fingers against her crossed arms as she continually repeats the eight steps it takes to cross the cell, pivoting sharply every time she reaches the wall.

 

It’s not until the noise of the door opening startles her from her pattern that she realizes the rhythm of her fingers is Morse code—her father’s last message to her, those five, final letters—and she shakes her arms from their hold irritably. She turns, expecting and ready to face whatever troupe of Galra guards has been sent to round up her and Shiro, and blinks when instead Mazlo slips in, accompanied by only a singular guard, who casts what Pidge guesses would be a suspicious look at her and Shiro from under his helmet before muttering a terse “Ten minutes,” and turning back around to face the hall as the door shuts once more, leaving only the three of them in the room.

 

Slowly, Shiro stands from where he’d been sitting against the wall, previously following Pidge’s pacing with tired eyes. “… _Mazlo?_ ”

 

“Oh thank fuck,” Mazlo gasps, leaning against the wall and panting as if he’d been running, out of breath. “You two haven’t killed each other yet.”

 

“What are you doing here?” Shiro asks, his eyes wide and looking completely boggled. “ _How_ are you here?”

 

Mazlo gives Shiro a look that makes Pidge think if he could roll his eyes, he currently would be. “I blew one of the guards, duh.”

 

“Oh.” An unreadable look passes over Shiro’s face, and when he next speaks, it’s clear he doesn’t really know what to say. “You didn’t uh—you didn’t have to do that.”

 

“’Course I did, wasn’t about to let Delphine do it. Better me than her.” When Shiro says nothing in response, still looking faintly alarmed, Mazlo throws his hands up uncomfortably. “Look, everyone does it around here! The cells have to get cracked open a few times a week either for fights or for hygiene shit, and that’s when business happens! Won’t get you out of a gladiator match, but if you want a small favor, something a guard can fulfill without getting their ass court-martialed, it’s the fastest means to an end.”

 

Pidge decides that’s probably the best time to intervene, sliding between them and holding her hands up in a placating manner. “It’s okay, Mazlo, we understand—nobody’s judging you, promise. We’re just not sure why you’d put yourself through that just to see us.”

 

Mazlo snorts. “Told you, didn’t I? Delphine’s been half-crazy with worry ever since the fight yesterday, especially once she heard you two’d been chucked in solitary together. If I didn’t promise to come check you were still breathing, she’d have found her own way in here.”

 

“Oh,” Pidge says quietly, and Mazlo scowls back at her. “I guess I just—“ She glances over unsurely to Shiro, who looks to her with just as much confusion. “I guess _we_ just don’t understand. Why she cares so much, I mean. She’s only known us for a few days, after all.”

 

Something in Mazlo’s expression softens, and he sighs. “You really don’t get it, do you?” Cautiously, Pidge shakes her head, and he grumbles. “You give her _hope_. Don’t ask me why, as far as I can see you’re just another couple of unlucky fucks who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but your being here means something, to her.” He shifts unsurely, crossing his upper set of arms and shrugging. “We’ve been surrounded by nothing but…death and suffering for what has felt like forever, at this point, and we’ve only had each other. All her friends, all our family, they’re either dead or gone who knows where. Delphine hasn’t even had another girl to talk to in months. And then you show up, another woman—another woman _like her_ —and you’re just…filled with all this anger, this refusal to just give up and wait to die like most of us have done by now.”

 

Pidge blinks, trying to wrap her head around Mazlo’s words. “But I’m just…me.”

 

Mazlo makes a noncommittal noise, and Pidge isn’t quite sure if it’s in agreement or not. “So what? She likes you. You make her think she doesn’t just have to die down here, that there’s a purpose to fighting back. Whatever reason that is, that’s goddamn worth something. She’s had more life in her since you showed up than she has in weeks, and like hell I’m going to let that get destroyed so quickly all over again.” He cuts a skeptical look at Shiro, and grunts. “You? She just thinks you’re too pretty to die so soon.”

 

“…Thank you?” Shiro says unsurely, and the look that crosses over Mazlo’s face is pinched and uncomfortable.

 

“Whatever. Look it’s just—“ Mazlo furrows his brows, all six eyes squinting in unison as he puzzles out whatever it is he’s trying to say. “Down here, everyone runs the risk of dying any day. We don’t have the time or the ability to shop around for friends and get to know them over lunch and all that. You’ve got to just go with your gut and if someone feels like they matter, then they matter. Well, congratulations. You two idiots matter to my sister.” His nose scrunches up. “And me, I guess.”

 

There’s a long moment of silence after Mazlo finishes speaking, the three of them just looking at one another awkwardly, before Pidge sighs, and says the only thing she can think to: “Well, alright then.”

 

She swallows down anything else she might offer. In truth, she likes Delphine, who most certainly showed Pidge and Shiro a kindness from the moment of their arrival she wasn’t required to, and she really doesn’t have anything against Mazlo, but something about his words still scratches at her uncomfortably. All she’s seen here is that it’s _dangerous_ to care about others—useful to have allies, sure, but in the long run, still dangerous. There’s no guarantee you can protect anyone but yourself down here, and when she already has Shiro to worry about, Pidge feels it’s a bad idea to let herself get too invested in the health and wellness of anyone else.

 

To a certain extent, she suspects that’s Mazlo’s thinking as well—he’s much more here for Delphine’s sake than for his own, or theirs, for that matter. He’s trying to look after his sister, do what he can to keep her spirits up, and Pidge can understand that.

 

God knows she’d walk through flames to protect Matt, if she had to.

 

Mazlo looks more relieved than anything when she says nothing further, and that alone is enough of an indication that she’d taken the right approach. They’re not here to discuss the deep bonds of friendship, neither of them.

 

“Right. Well,” Mazlo says quietly, eventually. “I’m guessing you two haven’t been told shit about what’s going on outside, so whatever you want to know, you better ask fast. I don’t doubt that guard was serious about that time limit, and we already wasted plenty.”

 

“I don’t even know what to ask,” Pidge admits. “I don’t remember much of…” she thinks of the two galra, and the bright lights, and pushes it aside once more, “…anything between the end of the fight and waking up here. I’m not even completely sure _where_ we are.”

 

Mazlo shrugs. “Solitary confinement, it’s what they use for some of the gladiators, once the arena gets to them and they’ve hit the point they don’t know when to fight and when not—or if they’re just the nasty, violent type that doesn’t care. After the upset you two caused, it’s not much of a surprise they shoved you in here.”

 

“Upset?” Shiro asks.

 

“Myzax was the fucking _champion_ ,” Mazlo says tersely. “Gladiators of that breed don’t just die, especially not to a couple of new slaves thrown in for sport. Monsters like that only get taken down by other monsters.” He laughs, one part nervous, one part bitter. “No offense, but no one was expecting you two to survive.”

 

“None taken,” Pidge murmurs, crossing her arms as she thinks again on that overheard conversation. Mazlo’s words echo it too well for either to be a lie.

 

“Not to mention you did it together. Teams are a big no-no in the arena—at least, any that aren’t strictly set up by those running the show are. Any other situation, they probably would have forced you two to fight after, just as some kind of way of regaining control of the situation, but given you both collapsed immediately after the fight…well, they couldn’t exactly let the both of you die, not when everyone who’d watched knew what you’d become—“

 

“What?” Pidge asks sharply, cutting him off. “What do you mean?”

 

“You don’t…” Mazlo blinks, eyes wide, and then gives a surprised, half cut-off laugh. “You’re the _champions_ now. That’s the rule here. Kill the champion, become the champion. You two are now the stars of this whole goddamn attraction, both of you. It’s…to say it’s unprecedented is an understatement. All the slaves talk, you know, down the grapevine. No one’s ever seen anything like what you did, and some people have been here a long fucking time, well before Myzax was champion.” Mazlo shakes his head, looking begrudgingly amazed. “You two broke so many damn unspoken rules with what you pulled, and no one can do shit now because of the rest of the rulebook.”

 

Shiro frowns. “Then why not just make us fight now, if they don’t want the both of us in this…position?”

 

“Oh, believe me, I’m sure a lot of whichever ring of generals runs the arena would love that,” Mazlo says bluntly, “But they can’t have you fight each other publicly, now that time’s passed. You’ve got _fans_ ; it’d be a disaster. No, if they want to get rid of one of you, they’ve only got two options: put you back in the ring and hope one of you gets killed, or find a convenient accident. Probably why they stuck you two in here together, honestly. Might have just been hoping one of you would kill the other and solve them the fuss.”

 

“Yeah, well,” Pidge snorts, “that’s not going to work out for them.”

 

“No,” Mazlo says. “Which only leaves one option.” He grimaces. “I hope you two are ready to go back in the arena.”

 

The words, while expected, still hit Pidge like a blow to the stomach. She knew one fight could never be the end of it, but every part of her still hurts, she can still taste the blood on her tongue and feel the chain catching against her skin. She’s not ready to relive that nightmare again.

 

“What?” Shiro asks before she can say anything, his voice loud and panicked.

 

“That’s how being champion works!” Mazlo snaps, his entire posture defensive and uncomfortable. “What did you think was going to happen? Losing means death, but winning has its consequences, too. The better you are, the more you fight, and like it or not, you two put on a goddamn show yesterday. I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but I can promise you that with all you two pulled, it’s very possible a lot of people in very high places will be looking at this as an excuse to get rid of you. Prove that you weren’t really champion material. You will _not_ be walking into something easy, so we all better hope you’re capable of repeating whatever the fuck you did to take down Myzax.”

 

“I can’t—“ Shiro takes a step back, wide-eyed and wheezing as he shrinks, arms wrapping around himself defensively. “I can’t do that again. Not again.”

 

“You don’t have a choice—“ Mazlo begins, and Pidge holds up a hand, shaking her head.

 

He means well, she gets that, especially as someone who likes to skip the bravado and lay things out bluntly herself. Really, she almost appreciates the fact that he’d skipped the theatrics and given them the most honest version he could about what they’d be facing, but it’s clear that him saying any more is not going to help Shiro.

 

To a certain extent, she wonders if she shouldn’t be reacting the same way as Shiro. The arena is still fresh in her mind—the scrambling desperation of it, the feeling of expecting any moment to die—and god knows it still scares her. But they can’t both be breaking down right now, they don’t have the _time_ , and so she takes her panic and shelves it, pushes it as far away from the thinking part of her brain as she can. Her mind is her truest ally, and she mustn’t squander it on fear when her and Shiro’s lives may very well rely on its being rational and forward-thinking.

 

 _You know how to be brave, even when you’re afraid,_ her father had told her. She must be brave.

 

She _must_.

 

“What are they having us fight?” she asks, grabbing Mazlo’s arm, and is proud when her voice comes out steady and firm, unyielding. No one will have her fear as theirs to witness. Not the Galra, not the arena, not even Mazlo, regardless of his questionable status as an…ally.

 

“I don’t know,” Mazlo admits, and he actually looks regretful. “I’m sorry, but I just don’t. Only so much of the talk makes it down as far as our cell.”

 

“But—“ Pidge begins, and then there’s the noise of the door opening, the singular Galra guard still standing irritably outside.

 

“Time’s up,” the guard says, and Pidge slowly lets go of Mazlo’s arm. Mazlo hesitates, a conflicted look crossing his face, and then just nods to her, going to the door.

 

“…Mazlo, wait!” she calls, and he stops.

 

“What?”

 

“Do you think—“ Pidge pauses, thinking over her words. “If we win again, if we prove we’re cut out to be these…champions, will they put us back in the old cell, with you and Delphine and the others?”

 

A lopsided smile flickers over Mazlo’s face for a moment, just a moment, before vanishing, and he shrugs. “Pidge, when you’re the fucking champion, I’m pretty sure you can have any cell you want.”

 

And then he disappears, the door shutting behind him as he follows the guard back down the hall, Pidge watching the last sliver of light from the outside of the cell with longing until the moment it’s gone.

 

There wasn’t even time to say thank you.

 

 

 

❀ ✿ ❀

 

 

 

For Pidge, her first winter break after she enrolls in the Garrison can’t come soon enough.

 

When it finally arrives, she doesn’t waste any time. She practically sprints back to her dorm room, well aware that her father’s last meeting ends only half an hour after her after last class. By the time her father finally knocks on her door, politely sticking his head in and asking her what time she thinks she’d be ready to head home, she’s already waiting by the door, bags packed, laptop under her arm, and headphones around her neck.

 

While her father looks slightly disconcerted, he doesn’t say anything as he helps her load her stuff into the car, and that she’s grateful for. They pull out of the still half-full parking garage—some professors have already left, but others won’t until tonight, and Pidge has overheard enough to know many students won’t leave until tomorrow—in silence, her father’s fingers drumming anxiously on the steering wheel for a moment, before he asks, “Do you…want to pick out a CD for the drive?”

 

Pidge glances at him, raising an eyebrow. “Dad, we live like…twenty minutes away.” Her father shrugs, not looking away from the road, and she sighs. Popping open the glovebox, she pulls out her Dad’s stack of CDs, snapping off the rubber band and flipping through them. “Florence?” she asks, holding up the artist in question’s CD, and her father beams, nodding.

 

Opening the case, she takes out the disk, sliding it into the CD player slot on the dashboard. After a moment of fiddling with the dials, a woman’s loud, rambunctious voice wheezes out from the car’s old, perpetually tinny-sounding speakers. The one on Pidge’s side of the car starts to crackle within a couple minutes, and she frowns, thumping at it with the palm of her hand until the audio clears up. “The speaker’s acting up again.”

 

“I’ll fiddle with it over the break,” her father promises.

 

“You do realize…” Pidge says, sitting back in her seat and crossing her arms, eyeing the other CDs in her lap skeptically, “most people wouldn’t buy up a half-wrecked antique and refurbish it just for the sake of having a CD player in their car. There are easier ways of getting music.”

 

Her father sniffs delicately. “It’s not the same, though! Everything these days is just stored digitally—and don’t get me wrong, that’s definitely handy—but there’s not the…” he pauses, mulling over his words as he stares out at the road, “the _physicality_ you get with the old stuff—CDs, records. Things you can hold in your hands and look after and _keep_.”

 

Pidge decides against pointing out to her father that a lack of physicality is rather the _point_ of digitalizing everything.

 

He’s always been a collector of the old forms of media, ever since she was a child. Some of her first memories are of their house filled up with shelves upon shelves of everything he’d amassed—DVDs, VHSs, books as high as the eye can see, and the music, always the music. Her father has more CD racks than most people do storage cabinets, and his prized possession has always been his record player and it’s accompanying selection of records. If nothing else, it’s all always left Pidge with no doubts about which side of the family she inherited her hoarding tendencies from.

 

She’d always found it funny that the man who dedicated his life and career to research that pushes the boundaries of space-exploration technology has such a fondness for what are essentially useless antiquities.

 

Though, admittedly, some of her fondest memories of growing up are connected to her father’s ridiculous media collection. She was raised on dusty VHSs and the outdated, rubbishy anime they showed, on old movies from her father’s childhood stored in cracked and lovingly tape-repaired DVD cases, and, of course, the music.

 

“You know,” her father says cheerfully, drawing her from her musings, “I wanted to be a musician when I was your age.”

 

“I know.”

 

“I kept telling my parents I was going to run away to LA rather than finish school, go to the place where so many of the greats got their break.” Her father grins idly. “And I probably would have, too, if it weren’t for one thing. Do you know what that was?”

 

“Yes—“

 

“I fell in love. Not with a person, but with the stars, and then all I wanted to do was be up there, in space, one day myself—all your Uncle Charlie’s fault, of course. If he hadn’t dragged me out to that open house the Garrison was hosting to try and attract new recruits, I never would have ended up applying.”

 

Pidge groans. “ _Yes,_ Dad, I know. You’ve told me this story a hundred times.”

 

Her father chuckles, giving her a quick, amused glance before turning his attention back to the road. “It’s a good story!” He falls silent for a moment, fingers drumming along on the steering wheel in time to the music still playing on the speakers. “Point is, I may not have known all my life that I wanted to work in space exploration, but I got there eventually.” Her father sighs, a small smile on his face. “I won’t lie, when you first told me you wanted to go to the Garrison, I was a little worried you were just doing it because you felt obligated—following in the family footsteps, and all that. But you’ve loved the stars since you were little, I should have known it’d be the right place for you.”

 

“…I guess,” Pidge says quietly, slumping down in her chair, and her father shoots her a knowing look.

 

“So, you want to talk about whatever it is about school that has you so down in the dumps?”

 

“Not really,” she grumbles, and her father just nods.

 

“Alright, fair enough.”

 

“…It’s just…” Pidge sits up, gesturing expansively with her hands, as if she can somehow wish her thoughts into existence just so that she doesn’t have to try and make sense of them enough to actually explain. “I thought it would be…different, I guess.”

 

“Different?”

 

“Yeah, you know, like…” She wrinkles her nose, trying to find her words. “I really thought, a place like the Garrison, I’d actually be normal for once, be around other people who think like me, who aren’t going to judge me for my brain or my interests. But even here, I still just…clash with people. Nobody wants to work with the youngest person in the room, especially if they’re doing better than them.”

 

“Pidge—“

 

“And it’s not just that!” She waves her hands, accidentally knocking the CDs and sending them scattering to the floor. “They treat me differently! I have no idea if it’s because of my age, or my brain, or because I’m trans, or—even if it’s just because I’m a girl. Some of those engineering students are so pig-headed, they hate a girl being top of the class—“

 

“ _Katie,_ ” her father says firmly, and she falls silent. “It’s alright, you’re allowed to be upset. You don’t have to convince me.”

 

“I’m just…” Pidge sighs. “The work is amazing, Dad. It’s _so_ amazing, but that doesn’t make any of the rest of it any easier.”

 

She falls silent, and her father remains quiet as well for a long moment, eyes on the road and teeth worrying his bottom lip as he always does when he’s thinking hard about something. “…Do you want to be a Garrison officer one day?”

 

“What?”

 

“Well,” her father glances at her awkwardly. “Do you?”

 

“I—“ She shrugs. “Yeah, I do. I really do.”

 

“Then that’s enough to make it worth sticking out,” her father says with a decisive nod. “…I can’t promise it’ll all get better immediately, sweetheart, but it will. The older you get, the more you understand that unpleasant people are just…unpleasant. The ones that really matter, those are the ones who stick around: your _real_ friends, and you’ll find them eventually. And if anyone in your classes gives you rubbish for your age, or your gender— _any_ aspect of it—you report it. You don’t have to take crap from anybody.”

 

Pidge snorts. “Okay, Dad.”

 

“I’m serious, kiddo. I’ve never known you to take a hit lying down in your life, and you don’t have to start now just because you’re in a place where you want to stay. Nobody ever got anywhere very fast without rocking a few boats, and goodness knows you’re headed for the top.”

 

“…You really think so?”

 

“Of course!” he father says, as if it isn’t even a question, and Pidge smiles just slightly, leaning back in her chair and closing her eyes. The song on the speakers has just changed, all drums and fire-filled energy, a woman promising her own ability with every word, as if daring the world to question her, question what she’s capable of.

 

“…Thanks, Dad.”

 

 

 

❀ ✿ ❀

 

 

 

Pidge remains awake long after Shiro falls asleep.

 

She understands, objectively, that she needs her rest. They have no idea when this call to return to the arena will come, it may even be tomorrow—or would that be today? Every “day” spent in captivity with only artificial lighting to turn to only further confuses her sense of time, and trying to factor in how the concept of hours in a day and night cycle may change for the Galra only gives her a headache. Not to mention how time may move differently here than on Earth.

 

That is the thought that scares her most: time passing differently. It has haunted her since it first came to her mind, that first night in their original cell. She has no idea how many days, weeks, or months it may be before she finds a way to escape. What if two months here is years on Earth? Decades?

 

What if she finally finds a way home, to find everything gone?

 

To find Matt an old man, or just another headstone set against cold ground.

 

She doesn’t think she could survive it. Not without something to return to.

 

They’re thoughts she pushes aside every time they arise, because she knows if she loses the belief her life can be returned to, she will lose her will to keep going, to survive.

 

The only thoughts, scenarios, more frightening are the ones where she dies, where she never makes it home at all, and she banishes those even more forcefully than the other ones, when they come unbidden to her mind.

 

She will survive. She _must_ survive, in order to bring herself, and Shiro, and her father home.

 

Regardless, her original point still stands. To survive, she must win every fight placed in front of her, and to do that she needs rest.

 

…Which is easier said than done.

 

Her mind rushes, here in the dark with only Shiro’s snoring to distract her, obsessing over their situation and what will come. Every time she closes her eyes, she sees the arena, feels the gravel cutting into her skin and the pain of dodging, falling, rolling, as she strains with every step to stay ahead of Myzax and his club.

 

Sees herself grabbing the chain, tugging him down to his death.

 

Pidge tells herself constantly that she’d only done what she had to, in order to survive, but it doesn’t help much. Not with her fear, or with her guilt. There are some things even her rationality can’t work through, even if it can keep them under the surface. Even she is not that good.

 

She’s lost somewhere in these thoughts, fingers digging into her knees as she sits, and eyes closed as she envisions the arena, tries to picture what she may have to face next, when Shiro starts screaming.

 

It cuts through her muddled mind instantly, and she scrambles to his side as quickly as she can, faltering when she realizes he’s still asleep. She touches his shoulder gently, unsure of what to do.

 

Matt used to get night terrors, when he was younger. She would hear him from down the hall. He would always wake himself up, though, by the time she got there, sometimes before she’d even gotten out of bed. He’d always insist on sleeping in her room, those nights, would either find his way there himself or she would carry him back, if she’d already been on her way to wake him. They’d sleep curled up back to back on her bed, all sharp spines digging into each other as they breathed but not moving an inch, and he’d have no more nightmares for the rest of the night.

 

Somehow, she doubts the same strategy will work here. She hesitates, and then touches Shiro’s shoulder again, shaking him more firmly. “Shiro!” she barks, and is relieved when his eyes snap open, entire frame heaving as he gasps for breath.

 

“Are you—“ she begins to ask, before he suddenly sits up and turns, slamming her against the ground in one smooth movement, forearm pressed against her neck. His eyes are wide and unseeing, teeth bared in a wild snarl, and she scrambles, fingers clawing at his arm as she gasps for air. For a long moment he doesn’t relent, and when her vision begins to go black at the edges, she can’t help but think it’s ironic, having survived an alien abduction and a literal gladiator match, only to be taken out by her best friend.

 

Poor Shiro, he’s going to be devastated when he comes to his senses and realizes what he’s done.

 

Then, right when she’s about given up, hands going limp, Shiro’s eyes clear, terror filling them, and he jumps back. Pidge wheezes as the weight against her throat is suddenly gone, desperate to bring in as much air as possible, and then rolls onto her side, hacking and coughing as she tries to bring her body back to some kind of equilibrium. When she can finally breathe easy again, she sits back up slowly, and finds Shiro staring at her in unabashed horror.

 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, looking faintly sick. “I’m—shit. I’m so sorry, I thought—“ He cuts off when she leans forward, pulling him into a hug that he relaxes into for a fraction of a second before catching himself, and attempting to scramble further away from her. Pidge just hangs on stubbornly, waiting until he gives up. He doesn’t hug her back, arms still limp at his side, but she decides to count her wins where she can. “I—“ Shiro starts, and then falls silent again.

 

“You were back in the arena, weren’t you?” Pidge asks softly, and Shiro shakes, a small, cracking sob echoing out of him before he brings a trembling hand to his mouth, stifling the sound. “It’s alright,” she says, and Shiro tears away from her, expression thunderous.

 

“It’s not alright! I—fuck, Pidge, I nearly killed you!”

 

“But you didn’t,” she points out calmly, and Shiro scowls.

 

“That’s not the point! I can’t believe I—“ He scooches away from her pointedly, putting several feet of distance between them. “I’m dangerous…” he finishes at last, entire demeanor miserable.

 

“You’re _traumatized_ ,” Pidge corrects bluntly. “It’s not your fault, Shiro. I was the one who tried to wake you up. I should have known what you were having a nightmare about.” Shiro says nothing, and she sighs, shifting enough so that she can sit with her back against the wall, wincing and touching her neck gingerly as she does so. It’ll bruise, that’s for damn sure.

 

Shiro watches her carefully as she does so, his expression almost painfully guilty. “I _hurt_ you.”

 

“Yes,” Pidge admits, “but it’s not anything worse than the bruises I’ve already got from the arena.” Shiro winces, and she decides that was probably the wrong thing to say. “…I get it, you know,” she says quietly, changing tactics. “I’d probably be having nightmares, too, if I could sleep at all.”

 

“I just…” Shiro runs a shaky hand through his hair, tiredly staring down at the ground. “I can’t stop seeing it. Him. Myzax. I get he was a monster and had probably hurt hundreds of people but still—“ He looks up, eyes haunted. “I’d never killed someone before, Pidge.”

 

“…Neither had I,” Pidge says, even knowing as she says it that it is, in a way, different. They may have killed Myzax together, they may share the weight of the action, but the blade had been in Shiro’s hand. It was he who had driven it through Myzax’s skull. That’s a particular burden she can’t begin to understand.

 

At least, not yet—she has no doubt she will have to face the consequences of being the one to deal a killing blow, eventually, if she intends to survive. Perhaps quite soon, even.

 

“I can’t go back in there,” Shiro says hollowly. “I just…can’t. I’d rather die.”

 

“Well that’s your only other option,” Pidge points out bluntly, and Shiro glares at her.

 

“How can you be so calm about this?” he asks, and the question startles a laugh out of her.

 

“I’m not. Jesus, Shiro, you don’t think I’m terrified?” She holds up a hand, and Shiro’s eyes dart to it, to her trembling fingers. “I can’t sleep, I can’t calm down all I can think about is what might happen in that arena next—when I’m not just panicking about whether we’ll even find a way to escape and get home, at least.”

 

“But you’re not attacking people in your sleep,” Shiro says dully, the picture of abject misery. “And earlier, with Mazlo—“ He sighs. “You’re just…so controlled.”

 

“Because I have to be,” Pidge says with a shrug. “In a situation like this, me panicking outwardly gets us nowhere. If I give in to my fear, if I stop making myself think and try to plan ahead, then I give up, and I can’t do that.” She shakes her head. “I won’t die in here, Shiro. I’m going home, no matter what it takes.”

 

Shiro’s mouth quirks up in a sad smile. “I wish I could be as confident as you. I hate this…feeling, like I have no control. Like anyone could look at me and see just how broken I already am.”

 

She looks over him for a moment, studying the dark circles under his eyes and the solemn droop of his shoulders, and then sighs, holding out a hand. “C’mon.” Shiro hesitates for a moment, and then shuffles over, sitting against the wall next to her. She throws her arm over his shoulders, ignoring the awkward strain their considerable height difference puts on her own shoulder. “You’re not broken, Shiro. You’re human.”

 

“I _feel_ broken.”

 

“So do I,” Pidge admits. “I feel like my head’s going to go flying off my shoulders at any moment, with how much I can’t stop thinking.”

 

They fall silent, and Shiro exhales slowly, leaning his head against her own. “This will probably sound fucked up given our situation, but I’m glad you’re here,” he says quietly. “I don’t know if I could do this, without you.”

 

Pidge swallows roughly, closing her eyes. “I’m glad you’re here, too.” She pauses, and then adds, softly, “I can’t make the decision for you, Shiro, about whether to fight, or to die, but I want you to live. I _need_ you to. We’re a team, we always have been.”

 

“…Yeah,” Shiro says after a moment. “We’re a motherfucking team, right till the end.” He falls silent, and then sighs, long and heavy. “I don’t want to die, not yet.”

 

“…Then don’t,” Pidge says.

 

It’s the only thing she can say, really.

 

 

 

❀ ✿ ❀

 

 

 

The walk to their second fight is a silent, solemn affair.

 

Pidge hadn’t thought it could get much worse than that first time, trudging the halls with the sentries roaming amongst them as they all crowded together, Delphine’s fearful whispers the soundtrack to accompany the dull thuds and rumbles of the arena above them. She was wrong, apparently.

 

Instead, she and Shiro walk alone, a whole group of guards and sentries accompanying them, with a gun aimed at the back of their heads the whole time. She understands. Before, they were just another couple of prisoners, dragged out to be the fodder for Myzax’s bloodbath. Now it’s different. Now, they are dangerous.

 

She pointedly doesn’t give the guards a single look as they make their way to the arena, eyes ahead and arms at her sides, a perfectly painted picture of relaxation. Even she can act, when it comes down to it, apparently. Shiro is much the same, and if she didn’t know him the resolute set of his shoulders and the curled fists of his hands would be intimidating. She does know him, though, and so the catch of the edge of his bodysuit’s sleeve between his thumb and middle finger, worriedly picked at, is enough to display his nerves to her. If anyone knows Shiro’s nervous habits by this point, it’s Pidge.

 

When they reach the tunnel that opens up into the arena, hovering just before the mouth of it, the slightest of tremors picks up in Shiro’s arms, barely noticeable, and Pidge places her hand over the wrist of the nearer one, the closest thing to comfort she can offer in this situation. Shiro glances down to her, attempting a tremulous smile that falls quickly. “It’s quiet.”

 

She knows what he means. Somehow, she wants Delphine’s nervous chattering here again, Mazlo’s annoyed grumblings, and the indistinct murmurs of the other slaves. It had…made her feel less alone, reminded her that there were always others here, trapped in the same situation—others that, while not her friends, were not her enemies.

 

Now, it’s just her and Shiro.

 

In a weird way, it hurts. Maybe, she thinks, Mazlo hadn’t been entirely wrong. Sometimes people just matter, down here, even if you’re not quite sure why.

 

“Yeah,” she murmurs in response to Shiro. It’s all she can offer.

 

A few of the guards approach them, and in their arms are an assortment of weapons: one holds the sword from their last fight, and in the another’s…Pidge blinks, doing a double-take. It’s Myzax’s club, huge and unwieldy in the guard’s arms, to the point where another is not so subtly propping up the portion of the club not in the first guard’s arms.

 

“What’s this?” Shiro asks, his voice cracking just slightly, and Pidge isn’t sure if it’s merely in shock, or in fear.

 

The guards shift uncomfortably, glancing to one another. “The champion retains the weapons of those they vanquish, should they choose,” one says eventually. “It’s tradition.”

 

Pidge eyes the club, remembering the shattering force of its orb, the heavy pain of drawing breath from running so hard to avoid it, and then snorts, shaking her head. It’s a crude, cruel weapon; she wants nothing to do with it. Shiro just turns pale, stepping back and waving his hands in an obvious decline. Clearly his feelings on the matter are similar.

 

“No thanks,” Pidge says tersely for the both of them, then leans past the guards with the club to eye the others and what they hold, considering. “…I’ll take my chain back, though, if I’m allowed to have that,” she adds on, almost surprising herself with the words. She hadn’t realized she wanted it back until she’d seen it, dangling in one of the guards’ arms.

 

Another guard hands it to her, just as the first gives Shiro his blade, and she watches him take it with distaste. Pidge almost understands, can’t help but remember the feel of her chain’s weight in her hands as she’d thrown it over Myzax’s neck, and it’s a heavy burden, but her practicality still outweighs that. She needs something to fight with, after all.

 

There’s a cough, and she glances over to one last guard, his arms extended to offer her another blade, identical to Shiro’s. It must be the standard, what every slave receives when they enter the arena. She’d just been denied one last time because the two of them had been thrown in together as an impromptu punishment.

 

Almost unthinkingly, she takes it. It’s large and unwieldy in her arms, built for someone of a much bigger stature than her own, and even as she scowls and wonders why the hell they couldn’t have found a smaller version, she does take note it’s surprisingly light, despite its size.

 

Fucking alien metals. How she’d have loved to get her hands on the secrets of what this was made out of, in another life.

 

Right now, all she’s concerned with is whether she’s capable of wielding it.

 

She considers it for a moment, and then promptly drops it on the ground, ignoring the startling and aimed blasters of several guards around her at the noise. Crouching down, she takes one end of the chain and loops it through the handle in the most complicated knot she can manage. When she stands, she holds the chain carefully with both hands, using it to lift up the blade and check it hangs evenly.

 

“Is that a good idea?” Shiro asks lowly.

 

“I’m too small to handle it as it’s intended very well, but I know I can swing this decently enough. And this way I don’t have to get as close.” She looks up to him, and shrugs. “Whatever works, right? It’s not like you knew you were capable of using that thing until you got it in your hands.”

 

Shiro’s mouth is a thin, unhappy line, but he nods begrudgingly. “True.” He shifts to stand at her side, the both of them facing the entryway to the arena, and his eyes scan the guards carefully. “They’re different, this time.”

 

“They’re scared,” Pidge says bluntly. The guards know what they’re capable of now.

 

A roar of noise from the arena comes, signaling the end of a fight, the call for a new contender, and they glance at each other, and then back to the waiting guards as they lift their guns, blasters whirring as they aim them pointedly at their backs, a promise that there is no chance to turn back, should they be so inclined. “Still doesn’t change anything, though,” Shiro says, and Pidge inclines her head in agreement.

 

Her heart hammers in her chest, loud and frightened, and the glimmer of white above them is the headlights all over again, continually daring her to stop and stare rather than get out of the way and save herself.

 

“No, she says. “It doesn’t.”

 

Together, they step forward, into the light.

 

 

 

❀ ✿ ❀

 

 

 

Delphine is up the moment they step back into the cell, exhausted and a little more than worse for the wear. There was no medical check, this time. Pidge did not see the two Galra who had whispered above her head again.

 

Delphine rushes forward as soon as the doors shut, throwing her arms around Pidge and nearly knocking her over.

 

“You came back,” she cries, and Pidge isn’t sure if the feeling in her chest is sorrow or relief, but either way, it hurts just a little.

 

Mazlo watches her cautiously over Delphine’s shoulder, eyes wary and careful as he studies her, then Shiro. He knows, sees what Delphine perhaps refuses to—it may not be death, but coming back has its own implications, too—and while he doesn’t judge them for it, he still notes it.

 

“Yeah,” Pidge says hollowly, feeling slow and clumsy to hug Delphine back, even as she reminds herself they _can’t matter_. Not Delphine, not Mazlo, not any of these nameless prisoners. Only Shiro.

 

She understands now, why they hadn’t given her their names, or spoken to her when she’d first arrived. They were trying to save themselves from the attachment.

 

“…I came back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Voltron is set in the future and Sam Holt was a hipster millenial change my mind.

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found at:  
> [pastel-clark.tumblr.com](http://www.pastel-clark.tumblr.com)  
> and  
> [twitter.com/hpClarkster](http://www.twitter.com/hpClarkster)
> 
> The contributing artist for this fic can be found at [anime7otaku7artist7.tumblr.com](http://www.anime7otaku7artist7.tumblr.com)


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